Unlikely Assassin
by Kayla McGowan
Summary: Jack Audrey Richman works as a bodyguard for the daughter of an influential man. By night, she works for his wife, she’s the law as far as the underworld is concerned and Jack is one of her best Assassins. That is until Riddick is thrown into the mix.
1. Pro

Pro. Escape.

Anger coursed through my veins along with fear as I ran and jumped the small three foot gap from the edge of one building to the roof of the next, not letting up momentum or speed until I was across the second roof and slithering down the drainpipe to land in a crouch at the back of a side street.

I was breathing heavily. I hadn't thought that I was going to be running anytime soon and then having been practically thrown through an open window and yelled at to run my ass off, I had done just that. I had taken off as fast as I could and as I had been taught I didn't look back. I hadn't stopped, not until now, and until now I hadn't let up pace.

I had to be a good three blocks away from the building I had just fled. My breath caught in my throat as I surveyed the alleyway that I had landed in, concealed by the shadows because of the dark black of my fitted flared jeans, black combat boots and form fitted long sleeved t-shirt, still in my customary black.

I gave color up a long time ago.

There was no sound of pursuit, no indication that they even knew I had been there. It seemed to me that he had been too quick in getting me out for a person with him to even have been noticed. But that didn't stop my nerve endings from tingling or my ears trying to pick out the smallest sound that shouldn't be there. This kind of stuff made me feel like I was a kid again, quick and clever enough to know what noise meant danger.

There was no one out there, nothing besides the cars that passed the entrance of the street. No one, it seemed, was even looking for me, they were too caught up in what great luck they had had, catching one of the universes most feared convicts. I, I began to realise, was of little consequence to them now, if they had ever been aware of me in the first place.

I stood up, slowly letting my body straighten out till I was standing at my full five foot seven inch height, confidence in my stance that was a force of habit rather then the way that I was actually feeling at that moment. I was hurting all over, not just my muscles but something inside too.

I was alone again.

The realisation hit me as I cast aside the black baseball hat that had been on my head, running my fingers quickly through my bobbed and styled hair, making sure that the long fringe lay right at the front, nearly obscuring my whole left eye from sight before I untied the sleeves of my zip-up hooded sweatshirt, that I had tied around my waist before the alarm had been tripped, not by us may I add, and threaded my arms through it, zipping it up firmly as I walked out of the alley as if I had taken a wrong turn. My arms wrapped themselves around my torso, I was feeling vulnerable, through to the world I would just have looked like another person affected by the chill in the air.

I was a good actress.

Two armoured squad cars zipped past me and the crowd around me suddenly surged forward as I backtracked with them to the entrance of the building I had just escaped, alone. There was a line of policemen already keeping the crowds back as I pushed my way to the front, confident that they didn't even know that he had an accomplice. He would never tell them.

I felt sick.

But I faked a look of neutral curiosity and looked the nearest policemen dead in the face. "'s going on?" I asked him looking around at the mob that was looking at the entrance of the building expectantly. God, how I felt sick, I knew exactly what was going on, who they were waiting for and it made me feel sick.

I had gotten away.

He hadn't.

"They've caught Richard B. Riddick." The officer answered me with a cocky as shit grin and I managed a small nod before turning my eyes back on the large glass double doors that we had merely looked at before hitting the back entrance. I wanted to hit him so hard that that smug look on his face disappeared but I didn't, I just turned away.

How did it all go so wrong?

The crowd was restless, standing there waiting to catch a glimpse of a famed killer and yet they were afraid. It didn't matter that there had to have been more then twenty of them, a number that was quickly growing as word spread on the street, that they had Riddick in cuffs once more. I wanted to be sick and then cry my heart out but I did neither, I just took a couple of steps back so I was in about the third row of the crowd and made my way over, so I was standing near the squad car that I was sure from the armed guard that he would be taken away in.

I would make sure that he saw me. Make sure that he knew that I was safe; he hadn't got himself caught for no reason.

Those glass doors swung open and a hush fell on the crowd as two heavily armed officers walked out of the door, followed by another holding a long length of silvery chain that was attached to a collar made of metal that they had put around his neck. Already he had a bit in his mouth and he had been robbed of the protection of his goggles, his silver eyes looking at the crowd and stopping on me when he saw me.

A tear dripped down one of my cheeks.

His arms were fastened securely behind his back, his wrists cuffed so close together that I knew with how broad his shoulders were that they would start to ache sooner rather then later. The cuffs on his wrists were connected by a length of chain to cuffs around his ankles that made him walk with a short choppy stride rather then the long, fluid, predatory movement that I was so used to seeing.

Another tear fell as a man near me jeered.

He held my eye, worry and accusation written in them. Accusation, of what? Because I got away and he didn't? A flair of anger and guilt hit me at the same time, making me freeze completely. _I'm sorry!_ I mouthed and he managed a small shake of his head that didn't make his captors suspicious and made sure that I knew it didn't matter if I was sorry or not, he wasn't mad at me for doing exactly what I was told by running. He was trying to tell me something else and what it was he was trying to say hit me like a ton of bricks.

He didn't want me there, there was still a threat to me and I was ignoring it completely. That and I don't think he ever wanted me to see him like that, tied up like an animal. Not again. Not after all we had been through together. But for that same reason I couldn't bring myself to leave him.

I knew I should move at that moment, shrug my shoulders and say to someone near me,_ 'Doesn't look that dangerous to me' _before walking away. I knew I should, but I couldn't. So I stood there, my eyes locked to his deep pools of silver as one of the two guards behind him, hit him in the lower back with the butt of his rifle.

I flinched, making myself stay still, biting down on my lower lip so hard that I felt a small rush of warmth and tasted the copperish flavor of my own blood, just so I wouldn't let the scream of, _'NO'_ rip from my throat.

I wondered if he knew how much I was hurting standing there and watching what was being done to him. How much it hurt to see his graceful movement restricted or the way that my breath caught in my throat to see the bit back in his mouth, making him bare those strong white teeth with an aggression that was only part of who he was.

It felt like someone had reached inside my chest and was squeezing my heart as hard as they could. I didn't know what to do, I knew I couldn't possibly help him no matter how badly I wanted to do something, stage some sort of a rescue, anything. So I just stood there. Stood there and watched the one good thing in my life be loaded up in a squad car and driven away, out of my life, into a life I wouldn't wish on the dog that bit me. And then I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked away like the whole thing didn't matter at all.

I was alone and I felt utterly helpless.

* * *

Note: Hello everyone.

So I'm sure you're all aware of who my main character is. This is my take on what might have happened if we discount the whole COR. I hope you enjoy the story that I have planned out. Reviews are more then welcome I love to hear your comments, thoughts and even ideas as to where you think this story should be headed.

Thanks.


	2. Chapter 1

WOW! What a response...thank you guys so much! I really do love to open my mail box and see your reviews there...:) Please do keep letting me know what you think.

Kayla

* * *

Chapter One: Security. 

I woke with a start. I was shivering. My sheets drenched in a cold sweat that was now chilling me to the bone. It's always like this, I don't think I've had a solid nights sleep for four years now. Not between the nightmares that plague me and the assignments that can at times keep me up for most of the night to complete them.

Well, a girl's got to keep bread on the table and a gun in her hand.

But the assignments that I go in for aren't what most people looking at a girl like me would think I'ddo or for that matter be good at. They'd look at me, five foot seven inches tall, slim, a B cup with a pretty face and a great ass, well; I think the whole point is that I know what they would think I'd be good at.

Hell if they'd ever catch me doing anything like that!

The nightmares are always about two things, winged monsters that fly only in the night and darkness and of _his_ capture. When he was caught, chained and put in that squad car five years ago and sent back to Butcher Bay, I lost everything that was important to me. The only thing that I had known since that crash.

Him!

Before him, before everything that happened to land him in my life and me in his care, I had an independent streak as big as New China (and I can assure you that that place is huge and currently diplomatic). I could look after myself and I did a few nasty things to make sure that I ate and had clothes on my back.

I had a few tricks up my sleeve, well; I had been on the run since I was twelve. These things happen more and more often these days, a thought that would horrify most average people and yet does nothing to pull the heartstrings of someone like me.

Call me heartless, brutal, whatever. It doesn't make much difference to me. I was one of these runaways. I was one of them that was sent to hell as a fifteen year old, only to find redemption. I had walked into that ship feeling ancient, liking the fact that I was generally ignored by the other passengers and left that planet on that skiff, feeling like the last three years of my life didn't matter anymore, like they'd never happened.

I was safe again.

A shudder rolled up my spine as I rolled over, wrapping myself in my blankets and pulling the pillow up, close to my body. How I wanted him there. I always did at times like this. When I had too much of him on my brain.

He used to stoke my back after I woke up from a nightmare, oftentimes shaking so badly I couldn't even hold the glass of water that he held out for me. Then I would curl into a fetal position toward him and his large, calloused hands would rub lazy circles onto into my back and I would fall asleep again, knowing I was safe.

The thing was, however, that I actually was safe. Ridiculously safe. Riddick's paranoia was almost as golden as my ability to hide; I however rarely had to put those hiding skills into practice. Somehow there was a large, ominous bulk of masculinity in between harm and me. I probably would have to use both hands; my own toes and someone else's hands too to show how many times that body had been a shield between imminent death and me.

I lay there, awake in the dark, until my alarm went off to tell me that it was seven am. I started work in an hour and a half, long enough for me to take a shower, change into my work clothes, eat something decent for breakfast and put on my game face. A face that showed nothing of the terrors of the night.

The wooden floor felt like ice underneath my bare feet as I padded across my room, across the hallway and into the bathroom. I locked the door behind me (I lived with no one but it was an old habit, I was a paranoid sucker) and opened the shower door.

"Heat 85." I commanded as I striped out of the boxer shorts and the far too large, male jumper that I wore to bed before stepping into the piping hot water and letting it run all over my body.

God, did it feel good!

I need that wake up call every morning, the water so hot that it made your skin tingle and yet not hot enough to actually blister or burn your skin. Felt so good, made me remember that I lived, breathed and could physically feel. Sometimes in my line of work you start to feel numb and that is dangerous.

I scrubbed all over my body before ducking my head under the spray. My hair still hadn't been allowed to grow past my ears, my fringe still crossing my forehead and covering most of my eyes and my eyebrow bar. A little sliver stud could be seen on the right side of my pert little nose that I would replace every once and a while with a ring to match the one on the left hand side of my lower lip.

I changed into my characteristic black jeans and a kaki form-fitted long t-shirt (my boss insisted that I ware some sort of color) and a black zip up hooded sweatshirt that was left open for the moment on top of the t-shirt.

My feet were still bare but I preferred them that way until I was just beginning to leave the house. Not wearing shoes made it so much easier to hear anyone approaching on the wooden floors that were in every room of my little flat. Bare feet made it hard for them to hear me.

When I brought the place, for it is mine in name and deed, it looked nothing like it does now. For a start, none of the floors had been wooden; they were all tiled or carpeted. I also toned down the color scheme, used natural colors, tans, greens, browns and creams…that kind of thing, it was more me.

It was a two bedroom; ground floor apartment with a nice sized bathroom, a small study, a living room and a kitchen and dinning room. I've added things. A highly advanced security system, a weapon's safe in the hall closet, another in the living room and then there are guns scattered throughout my home in places that most people wouldn't think to look. I have an escape route from each room of the apartment and each route is burned into my memory.

Paranoia. I have it bad but he had it first.

There were two main things in my life that made me feel as if I wasn't safe. The first was obvious; the lack of Riddick in my life, the second was my jobs. Yes, plural, I have two; one pays the bills and is traceable and taxable because it's my official job, the job that means I don't have to hide the rest of my income.

I am paid by a man called James Vinceson to be the bodyguard for his young twelve-year-old daughter. A more serious child I'm sure I've never met before and I hope not to meet again. But then, when you're constantly under threat of death, I guess you have to take life a little more seriously. I know that I do and the threat isn't always directed at me.

My other job pays for the extras in my life, weapons, gadgets and my sophisticated computer system. James' wife Bella Greendale-Vinceson is a little less then legal, not that they could actually tie her to anything. I started with her as a hacker, working her opponent's systems, keeping her up to date of all the latest technology but when she found out just who I was and who had trained me with a few extra, I guess you could call them talents or skills, I because one of her small band of very well trained assassins. There are less then ten of us in total and I'm one of the best. It's a shame she doesn't give me more work but then I have an added responsibility that none of the others have.

So I look after Anna during the day, keeping a better eye on her then her bloody nanny. I hate the nanny, she's an airhead, spends too much time talking on her cell phone and not enough time watching the kid. She's my main security risk when it comes to that kid's safety. If it were up to me, I'd fire her ass but as it is, the process that I would have to go through to get her fired is more hassle then it's worth so I watch out for both their asses.

Anna has an unhealthy obsession with me and my weapons. She's only twelve but I've watched her take apart a standard glock, clean it and then put it back together. It sent a chill up my spin and then I had the misfortune to watch her load it and shoot the bloody thing. That kid is a damn good shot and it scares the shit out of me. If it was possible she's a better shot then I was when I first started learning.

I went to Bella about it. Fat lot of good that did me.

It was her fault. Her own mother had taught her. She taught the kid how to assemble firearms and also how to fire them and it wasn't just a standard glock that she had taught her to use either, the kid could use weapons I hadn't been allowed to touch until Riddick had made sure I wasn't going to shoot my foot off by accident and I hadn't been a rookie when he had started to teach me either.

I had a cow about it, got up on a moral high ground that I didn't know I had, that was until she reminded me I had killed my first person at the tender age of thirteen. I didn't have much of a leg to stand on after that. Anna knew what she had to, to keep herself safe if it came down to it. If I was incapacitated, Bella had made sure that her daughter could use my weapons to stay alive. In a way I guess it was smart but I was never to tell James. He wasn't ever to know. He would never approve.

James knew about his wife's business, a business that she had inherited from her father after he had died under rather suspicious circumstances. He even exploited the fact that his wife was the overlord of most of our planet's crime to his advantage in his legal career. He's one of the best defense lawyer's that our planet has. It's really very interesting. James is one of those who sticks to the law, well, on the most part and Bella just ignores it completely. She's a law unto herself.

James can convince a jury of pretty much anything, he's got a gift when it comes to that. A gift that have saved a lot of very well paying, very, very bad men out of the penal system. In fact, he's just too damn good at his job, so damn good that it doesn't sit well with him. For James, sometimes that just unacceptable and his wife makes sure that things are taken care of. Of course, he never knows about it until the job is done, Bella never tells him. It keeps his conscious clean and he never even has to say anything.

Some people I guess would call that the perfect partnership. She knows what he's thinking before he says anything so he never really has to talk to her about work. And he's the only person that I've ever seen her defer to, she'll almost take orders from him, he keeps her tempered, stops her head from swelling too much with all the power that she has at her fingertips.

I armed my security system and walked out of my building to my waiting car. It's a dark forest green color in an old earth style, looks a bit like a twenty-first century soft-top mustang. I choose the make and model, Bella choose the color, she doesn't like black, not like I do. If it were up to her, I would be wearing neon yellow and pink and grinning like Cheshire cat. Good thing that it isn't.

Bella's made the last four years of my life bearable for me; she's cultivated the skills that Riddick started to impose on me. She's honed my skills and taught me new tricks. Now that not to say I'm the best. I'm not! Wasp is and then Ioan after him, I come in a close third, not that I'm exactly trying to get ahead of them, I'm happy where I am.

Wasp is deadly. His marks never even see him, I hardly can tell he's there before he gets to my side or says something, it's just plane unnerving. All his marks ever feel is a prick on a piece of exposed flesh. Instant death in the form of poisoned darts, they're his favorite way of making a kill, like Riddick's is a shiv in the sweet spot, fourth lumbar down, the abdominal aorta or Ioan's is to make his kills look like accidents and if that doesn't work then a bullet through the chest, right through the heart. In my case, I like to hit them with a bullet right between the eyes.

I make myself see the faces of my marks. I owe them that.

He would say that I owe them nothing and I would say that it's not that easy. When you stop thinking about the people you kill as being human beings then you really are screwed, you stop being human and start being an animal. One thing that Riddick taught me without saying anything was that you didn't ever want to be taken over by the animal inside, it made it too hard to find your way back to humanity if you were ever give the chance.

I was his chance and I blew it. I wasn't about to take a chance that would make me as much an animal as he had been when I first met him. Mind, his predatory actions and animalistic qualities had been what first drew me to him. The whole killing affair didn't come as easily to me as it did to him. As heartless as I am sure I appear to my marks or even to the people around me that I don't bother to let close enough to get to know me, I never forget a face and I'm pretty sure that I never will.

The gate into the Vinceson mansion is huge, made of cast iron and about as scary looking as you find. By scary, I mean it's imposing, like makes you think that you might not want to go in there. It takes voice, fingerprint and DNA recognition to enter and your car gets scanned for bugs once you give your keys to the valets. I hate those guys playing with my car but it's the rules, it's all about keeping those inside safe.

It's all about security. And I can assure you that security consumes my life.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Debriefing.

My first stop after the armoury, to pick up my approved weapons, was Bella's office. Already on her desk, my shiv and two modified glocks were in front of her, laid out on her mahogany desk. She was sat there like she owned the world, which would have been a semi-correct assumption in many ways.

"Morning." I greeted her with a nod and my eyes focused on my weapons and then I rolled my eyes.

"Always with the weapons Jack. You upset the valets every time they go over your car." Bella smiled at me. I shrugged, I would continue to upset the valets every day and the longhaired blonde in front of me knew it to. The day I left the house without a considerable armament was the day that hell will have frozen over. "Go on, sit. Why you wait to be told anymore, I don't know. Remember, you don't have to be as formal around me as you do my husband."

"Thanks." I sat.

"So Carter is gone then?" She said leaning forward onto her elbows, her chin resting on her palms. Bella looked like a child about to be given a huge stick of candy and I was about to do just that.

"The bastard is dead. I double checked." I nodded. Simon Carter was a bastard, a real one. He came after James and Bella but tried to go through little Anna. He was a sniper, a damn good one. It was only luck that meant Anna hadn't died. But it was like Riddick had once said, if you've got a damn good sniper on your ass, all you can do is pray and try and stay under cover as best as you can, the rest is up to whatever god you believe in.

Wasp and I had taken the child and her nanny out to a nearby park, a park I've been going to with Anna for about two years, hell if we'll ever go again. That's what I get for getting into habits, I should know better, only no one has told me that yet and they probably never will.

Wasp bent over Anna to pick up the bracelet that she had dropped and couldn't find herself and got hit in the side, it would have tore right through the kid's liver if it hadn't been for him and more then likely there would have been a second shot if he hadn't pulled the kid under him when he dropped to the ground. Meant he had to have surgery but it also meant I got myself an automatic mark and I went to work with pleasure.

"Glad to hear that." Bella nodded. "Right between the eyes?" She liked to know the details of my marks, well, the ones that I got because of Anna. It gave her some sort of pleasure to know how they had died, I figured that that had to do with the fact that they had tried to kill her child. Maybe it's that mother's protective instinct…I dunno but then it's not my job to have issues with it.

"Right between the eyes but not before I put a bullet through his side. Perhaps not what Wasp would have thought of, but I figured that it'll do, I'm not quiet as inventive as he is." I shrugged as if it didn't matter at all. She laughed and I rolled my eyes.

"You might get along better if you were as inventive as Wasp." She shrugged, her eyes twinkling. But then she knew that not everyone could be an assassin and an artist on top of it.

"Yeah, yeah…doesn't work that way for me. I can't see a human body as a canvas yet." I stuck my tongue out at her and grinned.

"Another face to remember." Bella gave me a sympathetic look and my smile faded to a light frown. She was probably the only person in the world besides him that I'll take any sympathy from and neither of them give much or often.

"It was worth it." I clenched my jaw for a minute. I hated any person who tried to harm a child; I guess a little bit of Riddick's feelings on the matter had rubbed off on me. Mind, he just didn't like those people, I killed them, which of us was worse? "So who's my next mark and what's the deadline?" I was desperate for to get away from the conversation that got her asking about my mental health again. That was a conversation that I never liked having with that woman.

"You're off for a few weeks. I've been overloading you when you take into account your other job. Anna's safety has to be your top priority." Bella shook her head. "When it comes down to it, I need you to be a bodyguard more then I need you to be an assassin."

"You can't sideline me Bella; you need me right now, especially with Wasp out." I sat straight up in my chair and protested. "I can handle both of my jobs just fine. I have been doing for the last three years. You know Carter was a damn good sniper, those guys are patient, Riddick used to always say that…" Bella put her hand up to signal her wish for silence on my part.

"Don't argue Jack, please. I originally hired you as a hacker but you're a damn good assassin and I've used that, perhaps a little too much. The work is running you down and I might need that talent from you later. For now use the time to train and rest. Don't worry about the money, you'll still earn the assassin's wage." She said putting down my protests. Her word was law and I knew from the set in her jaw that she had made up her mind.

"I still get my automatic mark through?" I asked, my hackles rose at the idea of Markus or Ioan getting anyone who had threatened to take Anna out. That was my job. My job alone!

"You can take those but only those. They will be your only marks for the time being." Bella conceded after a moment's deliberation. "No more protests.

"I can handle that." I went to stand up as she opened her desk drawer. I thought I was being dismissed. Bella never actually was one to tell you when to come and go. If she liked you, she was comfortable enough to let you come and go around her as you pleased within reason.

"Don't go yet Jack, I have something that I'm sure you'll like." She handed me an envelope and I sat down again, turning it over in my hands. It wasn't marked so I looked at her blankly trying to work out what it was.

"Who's it from?" I asked, not sure I wanted to open it up. The last time she had done this, it was a copy of a letter that she had sent Imam, a letter that included a rather large cheque so that he could move his family into a more comfortable situation.

She had done it after I had told her about the year that he had taken me in. It was like she liked paying off my debts for me. I could have killed her for it if she hadn't been so well intentioned and I had paid her back every penny of that cheque, it had taken me a while when you took into account my other expenses but I did.

"Why don't you open it and find out?" She asked a smile of anticipation on her face.

"I don't like it when you do this Bella, it makes me damn nervous and that's not good for a person like me. I'm high enough strung as it is." I grumbled.

"Stop complaining and open the damn thing." She rolled her eyes at me as I turned the letter over a couple of times in my hands.

So I did, I opened it and pulled out a number of sheets of very grubby paper that had been written on boldly in black ink. I think I probably paled about twelve shades and then looked up at Bella shaking my head. "This can't be." I whispered. "This is impossible; I've tried to get this…"

"It is not impossible." She shook her head. "Nothing is impossible Jack. Read and I'll explain more."

"This isn't possible." I breathed, my eyes hungrily taking in Riddick's bold handwriting. It was in code, I guess he was wary of those I worked for and I don't blame him, so he chose to write with a code that only I would understand. Damn but it was an old one and I wasn't sure if I could decipher it anymore.

**Jack** (was scrawled at the top of the first page.) At least he could still spell my name normally; I hated what my name looked like in code.

I stopped and looked up. "I can't read this right now. It's going to take me too much time to decipher it and I've got to get to work, Anna's going to be pissed off soon if I don't show up and I can't be assed with her attitude today."

"It's a good thing you've got the rest of the day off. I figured you might need a little time to yourself so Anna isn't even expecting you." Bella answered her.

"How did you get this out?" I held up the letter in slight suspicion. "I've tried to get letters in there but they all get sent back to me with a letter saying that the prisoners are too high security to receive their mail, let alone send anything back to the outside world."

"I have my contacts." She shrugged. "I wrote him myself about you. That was what I got back. I hope you can make better sense of it then I could, I mean, I couldn't even make sense of the letter he sent with it for me."

"Let me look at it." I said and she opened the desk drawer all over again, dug around a little and handed me out the other letter. "Can I have a pen and paper too?" I cracked my neck and set to deciphering the letter, my face going bright red with the passing minutes and then I crumpled up the translated version.

"So what did it say?" Bella leaned forward looking at my fist, which held the crumple piece of paper tightly.

"Umm," I suddenly felt rather nervous. "Well, he wasn't exactly very nice." I gave her a weak smile and she raised her eyebrows. "Well, the basics of it was that he, umm, basically wants you to mind your own business and leave his to him and that that includes me."

"Really?" She looked a little shocked.

"He doesn't exactly trust people." I bit my lip. "Sorry, you went to all that trouble for nothing."

"Doesn't affect my plans that greatly. I wasn't doing anything for him after all." Bella answered but there was a little frown on her lips.

"How good are these contacts of yours in Butcher Bay?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"I wondered when you would ask that. They are very firmly on my payroll, don't you worry yourself about it. His authority over the bay is absolute, I can assure you."

"The warden?" Bella nodded. "So, hypothetically, you could get me in there?" I said, my hands trembling again. I suddenly felt quite sick.

"Hypothetically. If he wants you in there, if he's not being very nice about me, who knows what he's going to say in the wad of paper to you." She acknowledged and then shrugged. "Go home Jack, take a bath, relax, read your letter and be glad that you've gotten one no matter what it says, at least he cared enough to write whatever it is he has. I knew my letter would get in and to him but I wasn't sure if he would actually write back."

"The warden in Butcher Bay is female. Rachael O'Hare." I said standing up, the letter clutched tightly in my hands for dear life. Bella smirked. I had proved my knowledge to her again and we both knew it.

---

In lazy clothes a few hours later, I sat at my dinning room table, Riddick's pages of grubby letter to my left and a fresh pad and pen on my right that I was using to write out a fully comprehensible form of the letter. It took me a while to decipher parts for the simple reason that I hadn't practiced that particular code since I had last lived with him.

The letter read:

Jack 

** What the fuck do you think you're playing at? **(Hell, that caught my attention right away. What a way to start a letter) **First off, did I not teach you what the words '_hide' _and '_run'_ meant? **(I flinched, able to hear his tone of voice in my head.) **I can tell you now, five years too late, that it does not fucking mean back track to the building that you've just escaped from to find out what's goin' on! When did you forget to you use your brain?**

**I realise that you're sorry for what happened in there Jack, your powerful friend made it clear to me in her own letter that you feel responsible for getting me caught but it wasn't your fault so stop with the pity already, I didn't teach you to pity yourself so stop, I don't blamed you though I would have given you a damn good hiding for turning around and going back if I hadn't been caught. I hope you've learned to use your brain a little better since.**

**Interesting line of work you've chosen to get yourself into and interesting people to ally yourself with. I can see you being a bodyguard for a kid like that but I'm having a damn hard time seeing the assassin in you kid. **(The tone had changed; I knew it the minute I saw the word _kid_. He always called me kid; it's how I knew he loved me.)

**You could always handle your weapons well and I have no doubt that you would have used the skills I taught you well but you're not a killer. I saw the look in your eyes after I killed, I remember how you wouldn't come near me if you had the option, until I was showered and changed. If you really are killin', you must be crawling in your own skin. **(He didn't even know how close to the mark he had hit. I could barely stand myself after a kill, once the adrenaline and the anger that I had been feeling had slipped away to nothing and I was left with the memory of a face and a kill. That was why Bella kept asking me about my bloody mental health.)

**I want you to be careful Jack. I don't know how much you can trust this new employer of yours. Her old man was the type that went into backstabbing, how do you think her brother and his father ended up dead in the first place? Who's to say she'll be any different?**

**Greendales are backstabbers, watch yours carefully, I don't want to get out of here to find out you ended up with a knife in your back.** (Get out! The way he wrote it, like he was more sure of that then anything. I could only hope it would happen. It wasn't easy escaping that place before he did it, it would only be harder now that he had.)

**I'm alive and as healthy as you can be in a place like this. That's all you need to know on that point. The rest of the inmates are beginning to understand that they can't creep up on me in the dark.**

The letter went on for a few pages, full of things to remember, reprimands for many things mixed with general ways of being affectionate. I guess that was just the only way that he knew to prove he cared.

I must have read the letter in both of its forms a thousand times before I put them away and sat back in my chair, my mind spinning out of control. Things were bad in there; he said it without actually saying anything.

Bella could get me in the Bay. If I could find a way to help him out, then I could get in and give him the information. That was when my plans began to form.

Three hours later, my eyes were beginning to hurt from the strain of staring at the computer screen. Stats were running through my head as blue prints and plans ran across the screen for me to study.

I had ideas, tons of them, most of which would be discarded before I laid a number out on paper. A lot of my plans were like that but I knew for anything to work it would have to be good, some of the best ideas that I had ever had and put together. It was going to take the best idea that had ever come into my brain to get him out alive or not get me thrown in there with him. He'd really kill me if I did that.

Bella's words were going through my head, over and over again. She had confirmed that she could get me into Butcher Bay, if only hypothetically. If I could get plans to him…I chewed on a fingernail as I looked through the guard levels of Butcher Bay.

My doorbell went and I pulled up the security camera feed that went from outside my front door to my security system. Ioan was standing there all dressed to the nines in a tux, to the rest of the world looking like he was made for the outfit and to me looking bloody uncomfortable. Ioan and I knew each other well; we generally got on well together and trained exceptionally well when we started pushing each other. If there was such a thing as a best friend in my like, he would be it; Bella kept trying to set the two of us up, it hadn't worked yet.

"Whatcha doing here dressed up like that?" I asked as I opened the door to him.

"No 'How are you?' or 'You're looking good Ioan' or 'Bloody hell you're fine, when can I next jump your bones?' I'm hurt Jack, I'm hurt." He put on a pouting baby fact and walked in. That's when I noticed the black drycleaner's bag in his hand and got suspicious.

"Ioan?" I closed the door and followed him through to my living room.

"You're not in the mood for fun?" He rolled his eyes and I gave him a hard stair. "Alright, alright." He shook his head. "I heard you were hungry for an assignment." He smirked then.

"Bella's forced some off time on me." I answered with a shrug.

"So there's this black and white thing happening tonight." He said.

"I can already see that and I also already see that you're going to it." I nodded. "So what's the favor that you're about to ask me?"

"My mark is at this black and white thing and I know for a fact that he has a thing for other people's wives." He answered bluntly. "I need bait and I don't want some green little pretty thing that will freak out when it comes to crunch time or actually fuck the dude." He said. "Then, after the guy is dead, we can head back here for a little while, open a bottle of champagne, have a little celebration of our own." He put a very expensive bottle down on the table, a cocky as shit grin on his face.

"I forgot how horny this got you." I laughed as he pulled me close to him and joined me in my laughter.

"So you in?" He asked kissing the end of my little nose.

"I'm in and perhaps other things can be arranged afterward but I want a favor in return alright?" I grinned at him.

"What favor?" He asked, still not releasing me, a puzzled look on his face.

"I got some news tonight. I'm going to be getting my ass in Butcher Bay and I wouldn't mind having someone to watch my back while I'm conducting my business." I answered.

"And you trust me to watch your back?" He looked at me sceptically.

"I do indeed." I nodded. "So you in or what?"

"I'm in." He nodded. "But we take this idea to Bella got it."

"Yeah, I got it." I nodded. "So hand over the dress in that bag and lets go." He grinned suddenly at me as he handed the dress bag over and I blew him a kiss before making my way to my room.

---

"Now remember, don't give him so much encouragement that you look desperate and all you have to do is lour him back to his apartment, you don't have to give him any shit…"

"Shut up Ioan. I have been bait before now." I snapped as I fixed simple diamond drops in my ears and took out my eyebrow bar and lip ring, placing them in the black bag that I had with me.

"For _him_?" Ioan looked over at me and I could hear the tone change in his voice immediately. He didn't like Riddick, not because of what he had done in the past, I could have easily understood that, but because of me. It never made Ioan comfortable the way that I would suddenly get quiet and sullen because of my memories of him or that fact that I felt guilty for something that wasn't my fault. He blamed it all on Riddick and therefore hated the man.

"Yeah, for _him._" I nodded, a knot forming in my stomach. I missed _him_.

"You have to move on and stop beating yourself up over his shit." Ioan shook his head.

"It's my shit too and I'm not beating myself up over it, it's just hard to be out here when he's in there." I answered him as I reached over and laid my hand on his arm. Ioan was defiantly the closest thing that I had to a best friend. "So let me make sure I've got this straight. My name is Mrs. Rebecca Stevens. My husband's name is Anthony. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature. I've been married for three years and as of late our relationship has been a little rocky. Besides lit, I like rock climbing, and gorge walking."

"You got it babe and don't forget the diving trips that we take." He nodded as I strategically placed a small tear shaped diamond on a long white gold string so it was sitting in the cleavage that my push-up bra created.

I had to complement Ioan on his dress picking. It was along black evening gown with a plunging neckline and an open back with the black straps criss-crossing up my back and over my shoulders to fasten the dress. It clung to my upper body and hips, showing off my figure before flowing loosely down to the ground.

Ioan parked his car outside of the function hall and opened his door as a valet opened mine and I stepped out, walking around the front of the car to take Ioan's arm as he handed his keys off and the valet drove his car away. Ioan led me up the steps into the ballroom and suddenly we were surrounded by throngs of people dressed in black and white.

"So this is the old wife Anthony." A man in his late forties came up to them with his supermodel looking wife on his arm and shook Anthony's hand. I smiled my best greeting at him.

"Hardly old John." Ioan answered him with a laugh as John took my hand and kissed it. "John, my most beautiful wife Rebecca, Rebecca, Mr. John Hawk." He made the introductions.

"My wife Maria." John introduced his wife.

"Nice to meet you." I offered her my hand, which she looked at disdainfully so I left it drop back down to my side.

"Charmed." She said tight-lipped and I had to consciously stop myself growling at her in return.

"Anthony, Anthony, Anthony." A man with dyed black hair sidled up to Ioan and clapped him on the back. "She's a jaw dropper, she is. Been hiding her eh?" He said, I stiffened and was silently glad when Ioan draped his arm around my waist and drew me close to his side.

He looked down at me, like a man proud with himself and smiled, winking at me. I knew that look; it meant that I had just met my mark. _'He's not your mark!'_ I reminded myself as I extended my hand for him to take.

"He's been hiding me away in the kitchen. He has this stupid, old fashioned idea that, that's where women belong." I said haughtily.

There was polite laughter all round. I smiled and laughed with them but I knew that I had just caught my man, okay, Ioan's man's attention. It was clear enough through my gentile jib of a joke that Mrs. Rebecca Stevens was not a woman happy in her own marriage.


	4. Chapter 3

First off, major thanks go out to Thugs4Less for numerous helps from giving me someone to bounce ideas off of to helping majorly on the technical side, to Thugs4less alsogoes all credit for the Trans-D and the Mitsi Katana. Thanks tons.

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Chapter 3: Good Turns

My job that night was supposed to be easy.

It turned out to be a bloody mind fuck!

The dancing was mildly fun, the flirting and gossiping was easy. The whole thing was easy; he was easy, too easy to entice, unsatisfyingly easy to lead a merry dance. I was disgusted in him, I wanted a challenge and it was far from that. The whole thing was just not what I expected which made me start to wonder what I did expect these days.

"You really are quite a lovely woman." James Bauer said as he let me into his apartment, the grin on his face meant, I was sure, to be alluring and charming but it only made him look a stupid fool, at least to me. The man made my skin crawl but I lowered my head a little, blushed appropriately and looked at him through my eyelashes. I was an old pro at this. "Make yourself at home, I'll go and get out of this tux and put some champagne on ice."

"Thank you." I smiled then and let myself into his living room and wondered around the room, my heeled shoes soon discarded as I walked carefully around the room on the balls of my feel. The feeling of my Trans-D in it's holster strapped to my thigh was very comforting as I tried to figure what the man had done to be put on Bella's most wanted list. It must have been something good for Ioan to be put on the job; he was one of the top three assassins that Bella had waiting at her fingertips.

Expensive art was hung on the walls; there were photographs dotted around the place and his plush furniture and carpet looked expensive. But then he could afford it; he was one of those men who had never known a day of hardship in his life, well his last day was not going to be easy on him that was for sure. There was however, nothing to indicate why he was about to die, no reason that I could figure out from his personal belongings.

I wish that I had made Ioan fill me in more before I said yes to this absurd mission. I was in a dress that made moving harder then I would have liked and I didn't know the ins and outs of this man. Fuck!

What sounded like a strangled yelp caught my attention and I spun round to face the door, if that was Ioan, he was joining this party early. I had come from one of the room in the hallway, which one through…had it just been James stumbling over something? Questions ran through my head as I decided my next best course of action.

"James?" I called out softly, I could at least rule out if Ioan was here or not just by his reply.

"How can I help?" He poked his head back through the doorway so that I could see him.

"Can you point me in the direction of you bathroom?" So Ioan hadn't joined us early and from the lack of his formal clothes he had just been in his bedroom changing. So if it hadn't been Ioan, who had it been? He didn't appear to be in obvious pain although his smile was a little tighter then it had been all evening. Had it been him or someone else?

"Second door down on the left. Take your time; I'll go get that Champagne I promised." He smiled as I walked past him into the hallway and turned toward the door that would be the bathroom. I let myself in and locked the door before hiking up the skirt of the dress to reveal the Trans-D and it's synth-skin holster. So many macho types like carrying around Wang-Liu designs but nothing beat a Trans-D for wetwork. Did he get all of his guest drunk, I wondered, before he tried to seduce them and entice them into cheating on their husbands or other halves?

I took the Popper, as they were called in the business, let my skirts drip to the floor once more and rotated my wrist. I unlocked the door again and peered out, he wasn't in the hallway, the bedroom had to be close by, and that whimpering yelp had come from there, I was nearly sure of it.

'_One foot in front of the other girl. Look like you're curious.'_ I told myself as I carefully walked down the hall, the hand my Popper was in behind my back, my other hand in front of me, reaching for the door handle. I was trained for this.

My hand closed around it and the door slowly opened and I let myself in. Tonight was supposed to be easy, an easy job where I just played a role that I had played a hundred times before. Someone else complicated things, made my job harder and made it harder for Ioan to get his mark.

There was a large double bed in the middle of the room, the sheets made out of what looked like silk and the headboard out of caramel leather. The carpet on the floor was made of plush material in a stone grey and felt incredibly soft against my stockinged feet. I moved slowly around the room to the wardrobe, opening it quietly but found there was nothing but clothes in it. I moved over to the side of the bed and knelt down, lifting the fringing on the bed to find that no one was underneath it either, just some shoes.

"Fuck!" I breathed as I stood up again and took a deep breath as I let my eyes scan the room again. This was not good for my nerves. There was only one place that anyone could hide left in the room, the closet and damn if I was going to be ghosted because I hadn't checked it out. That would just have gone beyond stupid in my books.

I moved carefully, slowly, my own breathing coming practically to as I reached for the handle of the door and readied my weapon before slowly opening the door. Nothing…there was nothing at all. I gritted my teeth and replaced the Trans-D once more; I wasn't going to need it. Hell, I was getting jumpy in my old age.

I closed the closet door again and moved to the window. Ground floor apartments were great to get in and out of quickly and safely. Ioan would probably pick a lower window. The bedroom window faced the back of the apartment out, into the communal garden that was obviously landscaped and maintained by a professional, there was no way I could ever see the man I was with getting his hands dirty gardening.

This plan of Ioan's was too loose and I was only realizing it after I was in the deep end. The only thing I knew for sure was that he said he would leave the ball some ten minutes after I had left and I knew for damn sure that he saw me leaving. The only guarantee I had to my survival was strapped around my leg.

I heard the door open to the room and James walk in but I pretended that I hadn't. A literature major wouldn't recognize the noises that I did. "Rebecca?" I made myself jump a little at his voice and turned round; my hand placed suitably over my heart as I gave him what I hoped looked like a relieved smile.

"You gave me a fright." I breathed managing a nervous sort of laugh.

"What are you doing in here?" He asked as I moved toward him as if to leave the room.

"Just having a look around. The garden must be lovely during the summer." I stopped at his side.

"It is." He answered, a touch of longing and sadness entering his voice.

"Shall we?" I motioned to the door and he nodded, opening it wide so that I could walk through. I ducked my head under his arm and walked back out into the hallway, making my way back to the living room, feeling his eyes on my lower back the whole time.

An open bottle of champagne was in an ice bucket and two beautifully crafted champagne flutes were sitting on the table next to it. At least this guy knew not to try cheep and tacky when he was wooing. I took a seat on the couch as classical music lightly drifted from a sound system that I couldn't see.

"Now that the taps can no longer hear us I think that you and I have something to talk about don't we?" He poured two glasses of champagne rather casually, handing one glass to me and giving me a level look.

"Taps?" I looked at him innocently, a look I had perfected before I had even tried running away from foster care.

"You belong to Bella Greendale. Your so-called husband is one of her assassins; he's been hunting me for months now. I came to the realization tonight that I wasn't going to be able to stop the inevitable. I have been trying unsuccessfully for years." James said calmly, his tone was level and his hand wasn't shaking on the steam of his champagne flute.

"I belong to no one." I replied, watching him sip his champagne.

"Did he pick you up off the street or are you really his wife?" He asked me, his tone nor his demeanor ever changing.

"I'm a friend." I replied before I had fully thought through the consequences of my actions. "Now what? You wait for him to arrive like you know he will and then hold me as ransom for your life?" I knew that I could draw my Popper and put a round between his eyes before he could blink. Unless he was a damn sight faster then I gave him credit for. I could already hear the popping sound that gave Trans-D's their nicknames as a Mushroom Round ripped a fist-sized hole in his head.

"He'll only come for me again later. I told you, this is inevitable. Bella Greendale has had her eye on me for a very long time. I'm surprised she hasn't had me killed sooner." James shook his head.

"Why would she want you dead?" I asked him, putting the champagne flute down on the table next to the couch. He looked at the glass then at me.

"That's a good champagne, I don't kill people, there would be no harm in drinking it." He said with a sigh. "But I should have known that I would be drinking alone. I don't blame you, no one who has had their foot in the underground world that we have been immersed in would drink with me either." He shook his head sadly.

"You aren't going to tell me why my friend is hunting you are you?" I looked at him and wondered if I would be so calm knowing that my death could walk through the door into the living room at any time. Part of me respected him for his lack of panic or outward signs of fear. Knowing I was going to die would seriously fuck with my mind I was sure.

"No, if you haven't been told its probably for a good reason." He looked me straight in the face as he reached into the pocket of his jacket that was laying on the edge of the couch. I stiffened and my hand started to make its way down my leg, preparing to pull out my weapon if I deemed it necessary. "Would you send this for me?" He held an unsealed envelope out to me. I took it and looked at it doubtfully, it was already stamped and addressed.

"Why do you think I will?" I asked turning it over and over again in my hands.

"Read it, check it out, put it through decoders and then if you are satisfied please send it." James shrugged and finished his drink as the door swung inward and Ioan walked in. "Good evening assassin." He put the flute down on the table next to mine and stood up as I did the same, the letter still firmly grasped in my hand as we turned around.

"Jack." Ioan said beckoning to me to move to his side. I gave James one more apprising look before moving around the couch to Ioan's side only pausing long enough to slip my feet back into my black heels. "Our ride is outside." He said to me his eyes not moving from his mark.

"Don't play with this one." I said quietly before leaving the room and going outside to the waiting Mitsi Katana. He had obviously taken the time to swap from the aero-lim that we had used to go to the black and white to the one that was sitting at the curb waiting for me.

I climbed in, folding the letter enough so that it fit unseen in my small black bag and then composed myself. The ride home was not going to be an easy one for me. Ioan would be on a high that I understand but I would barely be able to look at him until he came out of the shower. I could hardly look at myself under the same circumstances. I didn't even know if I would even let him stay, something in James' dignity had stayed with me and I wasn't sure if it would leave me right away.

-- -- -

"You're worse then a girl, get out of the fucking shower so I can get in!" I yelled through the door an hour or so after we had got home. I must have pounded damn hard on the door too because I left a small dent and the side of my hand started to throb slightly. I had stripped out of the black dress and heels as soon as I had walked in the door and had been wondering around in my slip ever since. Ioan beat me to the fucking shower.

"Just open the door and join me." His voice drifted through the sound of running water and the rustle of the shower curtain.

"You're a horny bastard. Get out of the shower." I yelled again, turning away from the door and walking perhaps half the length of the corridor before I felt wet arms encircle me from behind and lift me off my feet.

"I'll give you horny bastard." Ioan said as he carried me back down the hall and into the bathroom before I managed to wriggle out of his grasp. He never got to close the door though, in three deft moves, he was out of the bathroom and in the corridor on his ass. I slammed the door promptly in his amused looking face before stripping down and climbing into the still running shower.

My first reaction was to jump out again and then turn the cold up but I made myself stand under the punishingly hot spray and watched as my skin turned quickly pink. I ducked my head under, letting my hair get soaked by the spray before grabbing the bar of soap and my loufa and started scrubbing. I scrubbed every inch of my skin that I could reach until the water almost felt cold against the most attacked areas.

I poured a good sized dollop of shampoo into the palm of my hand before attacking my hair with the same fervor that I had attacked my body. This was my routine. I came back from a kill, no matter what part I had in it and cleaned away the skin I had been in, like I could erase it from my whole being by scrubbing a layer of epidermis away.

It was just so fucked up!

I wondered if Ioan had notice the sheets of paper that had been firmly in my grasp when I had left James Bauer's apartment that I appeared not to have when he got into his Mitsi Katana. If he had notice, he hadn't said anything. I wondered if he would have had he known. It didn't matter anyway, the letter was now safely locked in a vault that only I knew about.

Some five minutes later, my skin pink not only from the heat of the water but the scrubbing it had received and my hair slicked back because of the water I stepped out of the shower and onto the tiled floor. The reflection I caught of myself in the mirror was almost shocking. Standing there in my birthday suit I looked hell of a lot younger then I felt, maybe, I even looked my age.

I was slim, my breasts just round protrusions before the flat of my stomach. My legs were long and lean, all muscle, no fat. It was the same with my arms; you could see the slight rounding of well toned muscles as they hung relaxed at my sides. My face was pale tonight, not it's usual light golden color that seemed to have stuck since I was about twelve years old.

My hair looked almost black in it's waterlogged state and was plastered against the skin of my neck and around my face. The tiny holes where my piercing would be replaced looked even whiter then my skin if it were possible and my eyes stared at myself wide eyed and green in shock.

It was almost like looking at a stranger. I shuddered once, a shudder that ran from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes before I turned away from my reflection without a backward glance and reached out, pulling my tarry bathrobe from the back of the door and wrapping it around my body.

I made sure the shower had turned itself off with my leaving and then opened the door and walked out into the hallway, making a bee-line for my room but was stopped by the sight of Ioan before I even reached it. I sighed and changed direction, following him into the kitchen.

"Boxers do not constitute being dressed." I said as I leaned on the kitchen door frame and raised both my eyebrows at him as he poured hot water into two mugs. Peppermint Tea in mine and a strong coffee in his. The smells poured out over the tops of the mugs and mixed in a way that I didn't find unpleasant.

"A bathrobe isn't exactly dressed either Jack." He replied with a shrug as he handed the mug to me and I wrapped my hands around it. "Nice little move you pulled on me there."

"Aikido. You always underestimate me; it makes it hella easy to kick your ass. Anyway, you know I don't like to share my shower." I glared at him but there was familiar friendliness to our banter that took the sting out of the insults that we often threw at one another. "Prick." I growled under my breath as I took a sip of the hot water and let the taste of the peppermint infusion roll over my tongue and down the back of my throat.

"You know you love me." He grinned as he moved toward me, stopping when he was beside me long enough to bend down and let his lips brush my pulse point on my neck before moving off again and along the hall to the living room.

I growled and after a moment's deliberation followed him down the hall only to find him sitting on my couch watching the fucking television. I growled low in my throat and put my mug down with enough force to make a little of the liquid inside spill over the lip.

"How the hell can you always pretend that you didn't kill someone? How the hell do you go about thinking about sex and fucking seduction right after you've erased a life?" I yelled at him and he turned and looked at me with a slight look of shock on his face. I had never yelled at him over that before but something in me had snapped as I watched him watching the fucking tube like nothing had happened.

"It's our job Jack. Killing is what we're good at. You either accept it and forget about the other shit attached or you do what you do and hate yourself even while you feel that tug to find your next victim. Talents like ours would go to waste if we weren't assassins or we'd end up in slam just like your good friend Riddick." He shrugged. "Get over it."

"You get fucking over it. I'm going to bed." I snapped and stalked back down the hallway, slamming my door as I entered my bedroom and threw myself on my bed. Oblivion reached down for me and for once I let myself be taken by the darkness of a dreamless sleep.


	5. Chapter 4

Shout outs this time to Thugs-4-less, Catseyes120 and Tamekabu...thanks for your reviews and please keep them coming. Imput good thing...lol...on with the story

Kayla

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Chapter 4: The Storm

I was asleep and I was warmer then normal. That was the first thing that hit me as I moved from deep sleep to the light sleep that happens when you're not long away from waking up.

Bad dreams didn't wake me up.

My alarm didn't wake me up.

The phone call Ioan told me later that he took didn't wake me up.

For the first time in a long time I slept like the dead. I succumbed to oblivion and didn't care. For the first time in a long time, I didn't care if I never woke up again; I didn't care if someone got in and ghosted me. I slept the sleep of someone who had no worries or cares and damn did it feel good.

It was eventually Ioan that woke me, nuzzling my neck and his hand disappearing up the arm of my tarry bathrobe. At least I finally worked out why I felt so warm, sleeping next to Ioan was like sleeping next to a human furnace. I rolled over to face him but refused to open my eyes.

"What time is it?" I asked taking a deep breath swatting his hand away from my arm again. I was still in a comfortable place of sleep and every move he made only served in pulling me further out of my little comfortable place.

"Ten thirty." He answered, pulling me closer to him and going back to his previous actions, his lips working their way along my jaw line and down my neck as his hand started pushing down the shoulder of my bathrobe. I lay there for a moment, my hands coming between us, my finger tips lightly brushing down his chest before I went ridged.

"Ten thirty?" I sat up quickly and looked at him wide eyed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I leapt out of bed, ran to my closet where I started to pull out clothes, first my jeans, then my tank and then a black polo-neck sweater which I cast onto a chair as I turned and started rummaging through my chest of drawers for panties and a bra. "Shit, why didn't you wake me up when my fucking alarm went off?" I tossed a pair of balled up socks at him just to vent some of my annoyance.

"You were tired." He shrugged, propping himself up on an elbow looking slightly put out. "Come back to bed, it's still early." There was something almost demanding in his tone. Unlike me he obviously wasn't worried about the wrath of the Vincesons.

"Ioan I work during the day, you know that and I'm like two hours late for work. Mr. Vinceson's gonna kill me and then Anna's going to tare me into little pieces. That's two days in a row she hasn't seen me. The last time that happened I was in a fucking hospital where they didn't let children visit." I shook my head at him and tossed my bathrobe into the corner as I started to pull on clothes.

"I thought we were supposed to be loosing clothes." He moaned at me. "The kid's doesn't need you that much. She does have parents you know and a nanny."

"I'm not loosing clothes because I gotta work." I replied as I wriggled into my jeans. "And her nanny is a fuck-wit and her parents are both very busy people. Why the hell do you think they hired me?" I did up the top button of my Jeans and rolled my eyes.

It will forever amuse me how Old Earth slang still survived now, centuries after humanity had spread to the stars. Badges, Guages, ghosting... hell, even Jeans.

Fucking Jeans.

Whoever made the original pair of Jeans sure left his ancestors a gold mine. Oh the fabric has changed but the styles and the appearance of the fabric hasn't. Just like jeans years ago they are made with some of the toughest fabrics around only now, it's like wearing a second skin; you hardly know they are there.

"Fuck work. All you're doing is making sure that she doesn't get killed while her parents aren't watching her." He said.

"Fuck you." I turned to glare at him. He wasn't usually this obnoxious in the morning and I knew he was only being obnoxious because he wasn't getting what he wanted. Well fuck him, he'd just either have to wait or do himself.

"I'd rather you did." He grinned at me as I threw a cushion at him and it hit him in the side of the head. _Two to Jack_, I smiled.

"Get up, get dressed and call Bella for me, I gotta go get something to eat. Just explain that you were a pig and wouldn't wake me up. I'll be in and ready to report in half an hour." I snapped as I grabbed my sweater.

"Jack…" He was suddenly serious but I just flipped him off.

"Just make the damn call!" I snapped, not bothering to put my sweater on until I had thrown down two pieces of bread into my toaster and flicked the switch on the kettle.

I grabbed a travel mug and threw a tea bag in it before moving to the fridge for milk. Bella was going to kill me! In all the years that I had worked for the Vincesons, I had never been late and already I had broken that run of good time keeping. Mind, I had never slept like I had last night in those years either.

'_You needed the sleep.'_ A little voice said in the back of my head. Like me needing sleep was ever going to be an excuse with Bella, she'd just force more time off on me and I didn't need any more of that. Sitting on the bench useless was never a favorite pass time of mine. I had spent enough time with Riddick feeling that way. I swore back then that I would never force that on myself again. _'That was just Riddick's way of protecting you.'_ I reminded myself. Yeah well, look where that fucked up shit had gotten me.

"Jack, take a chill pill." Ioan said coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my middle. "You're not needed in until this evening. You've to come in with me for debriefing. Bella called around seven this morning but you slept right through the call. Some prick told her that you were helping me out last night. She says your not to come in until then, James is taking Anna to the Zoo anyway and he said that Preston and Charlie will be able to look after the two of them just fine."

"Why the fuck didn't you say that earlier you damn fuck, when I was running around stressed out of my head!" I turned around and pushed him away from me fuming as I looked at him. There was a grin of amusement on his face and a little mirth in those pretty eyes of his. And damn him, he was still walking around in just his boxers.

"Cause you're damn sexy when you get worked up and you were defiantly worked up." He shrugged, reaching round me to turn off the kettle and then looking back at me.

"You're a horny bastard."

"You just love to call me that don't you?" He started advancing on me and before I knew it, I had my lower back and ass pressed against the counter and his body pressed against mine.

"If the name fits." I hissed as one of his hands inched up my tank-top, resting on the flat of my stomach, thumb rubbing lazy circles into my skin and the other tilted my chin up so I was looking him full in the face. He lowered his head and lightly kissed me, almost experimentally, as if he wanted to gage what my reaction would be and then he pulled back slightly. Maybe less then half an inch, that was all that hung between us.

Part of me wanted to push him away, tell him to go fuck himself again and yet part of me didn't. He scratched an itch for me, something I had analyzed and over analyzed until I realized that I was in it for the comfort. He was my friend, my best friend and neither of us was out looking for relationships. We were easy on each other, no strings attached I guess you could put it that way anyway.

I stood up on my tip-toes, my hands gripping the edge of the counter top as I moved upward, crushing my lips to his. He gripped me tightly as he lifted me up onto the counter top, brushing my mug out of the way as he lifted me almost effortlessly onto the counter top.

I wrapped my legs around his and felt the heat from his body pass through the thin layer of my tank-top and infuse itself in my body. The fingers of one of my hands traced the line of his spine while the other kept him pressed to me.

"Damn fine Jack." He whispered as his lips left mine to trail down my neck and he gripped the edge of my tank-top. I helped him pull it over my head and discarded it in a corner of the kitchen. He quickly undid my bra clasp and soon that was discarded too. A shudder of what felt like electric energy flowed through me as his hands moved to my breasts and I heard my own throaty moan.

"Shit Ioan." I hissed as I arched into him and heard him chuckle. Torture was his favorite fucking game.

"Been too long eh girl?" He picked me up, my arms snaking around his shoulders as my legs wrapped tighter around his waist. He carried me out of the kitchen, down the hallway and into my bedroom once more.

Damn the boy can be attentive when he wants to be.

I felt the coolness of my soft flannel sheets against my back and within moments I was helping Ioan discard my jeans. I could hardly believe that five minutes ago I had been worrying about getting to work and now I was gasping for breath as Ioan's hands moved over my body somewhat like a seasoned pro.

He practically crawled up my body, his lips meeting mine fiercely as he covered me, barely giving me a second to think. This was the only time I lost control; I stopped thinking and just started acting. Instinct it appeared was good for other things too.

I gasped as he left my thoroughly plundered lips for my breasts and a shiver attacked my body as I felt his lips trace a line over my stomach. It was almost like a fire and I quickly helped him discard the last of our clothes before I used what control I had left to flip him onto his back so I was straddling him.

"And who says you get to be on top." I said cocking my head slightly to the side and all I got in response was a lusty grin.

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"You do realize that I'm going to be boiled alive when I walk through her door." I moaned at Ioan as he started up his Mitsi Katana and we started on the way to the Vinceson mansion.

There were times when I wondered why I sacrificed having a supercharged aerospace vehicle like Ioan's to keep my computer systems up to date. It wasn't like I spent much time in front of a screen anymore or hacked for Bella. Katina's like Ioan's were nice stock, they could either move at ground level somewhat in the same fashion as a car or they could use the much faster and more superior aerial highway.

There were three levels that could be traveled on, an old style road that were just as much of a pain in the ass now as they had been back on old earth, the aerial highways which were by far more amiable and then there was military airspace and they practically toasted you if you were to try and use their airspace.

Ioan's Katina was a special sort. Nothing special to look at on the outside but if you were to hook up a computer to the system or take a look at one of the four engines then you would know with out a doubt that there was nothing at all stock about the bloody thing. If the cops or the military got a hold of the car, they'd throw Ioan into a single max and leave him there to rot for a year or two. It was one hundred percent illegal thanks to our lovely employer.

"If she's going to boil you alive what do you think she's going to do to me when she sees me. I was the one that pulled you into the James Bauer shit anyway. Don't worry, she'll lay it on me and give you a slap on the wrist. After all, you're her little pet." He grinned at me, not at all as worried as I was. He after all was not about to either get sent back to the world of hackers and computer systems or fired all together.

"Fuck you. I am not." I looked out the tinted windows and unconsciously reached for the Popper which I had strapped to my leg. It would have to be checked in before I was allowed in Bella's home along with Riddick's shiv in it's special holster on the inside of my jacket.

"You have a dirty little mouth for such a young kid." He teased me.

"And you don't? Who is it that curses the wind when they stub their toe?" I turned back to him and gave him a pointed look. Ioan had some of the most colorful vocabulary that I'd ever heard; only he wasn't as frequent with it as perhaps I was inclined to be.

"That's hurts." He protested.

"Not as much as a bullet and do I have to remind you that you've taken a few of those?" I said sweetly.

"If you even repeat what I said last time you saw me take a bullet I'll pull this car over at the next gas station and wash your mouth out for you." He said seriously and I laughed at him.

We had to identify ourselves when we got to the gate and go to the weapons locker to check in what weapons we had chosen to carry on our persons before being hurried along the corridor that would lead us to Bella's office. It appeared that she was waiting to see us.

"Good luck Ioan." I said turning to my friend.

"Good luck Jack." He mimicked my tone as I turned away from him and knocked lightly on the door.

"Come." Bella's voice was firm as I opened the door and we walked in. "Wait outside Jack." She said and I nodded once turning and leaving Ioan to face her on his own without apology.

Do you know how nerve racking it is to stand outside of an office like that? It's like being in school and being pulled into the principle's office to be suspended for some stupid prank. I sure was nervous. I knew she wasn't going to be happy. And yet I couldn't bring myself to regret what I had done. I had given Ioan the help he needed, just like a friend would.

So I stood there for fifteen minutes thinking up every excuse under the sun that I could think of to deflect Bella's annoyance, all the while realizing that if she was pissed off enough, none of them were going to work. Then the door opened and Ioan walked out frowning.

"Your turn." He said in a hushed monotone and I grimaced at him before turning and walking into the study, closing the door behind me before walking and standing before Bella's desk where she was sitting frowning.

"I want to see your plans Jack." Was the first thing she said to me.

"What plans?" I looked at her blankly; I had a number of sets of them for different scenarios and different situations and people. Really I knew what plans she meant and I was loath to tell anyone their content yet, least of all Bella. If I knew Bella she would try to interfere or stop me in my tracks all together.

"Your plans for getting into Butcher Bay and getting Riddick out." Bella answered.

"Why do you want them?" I kept the suspicion out of my voice.

"Because I need to know how I'm supposed to help you." Bella answered.

"They're only rough-" I started and then stopped, looked wide-eyed at her. "Help me? You want to help me?"

"Yes, help you. I know your style Jack, none of those plans are going to work without help, hell none of them might work at all therefore you'll need to start from scratch. At the very least, I'll help you see him." Bella nodded. "But I don't want you going in there without a guard, do you understand me?"

"A guard? I'm a bloody assassin Bella, I don't need a guard, I can guard myself." I protested.

"I started planning this little excursion when I got the letter. You've got a week before your transport leaves. I don't trust the guards there and I'm not that sure you're going to be able to handle Riddick on your own, no matter what you think." Bella said. "So Wasp and Ioan are going with you."

"They're your two best fucking assassins Bella! You're seriously going to trust Markus while they're gone? Wasp isn't even ready for action yet." I started to argue at the same time.

"Wasp is almost completely healed and was never the kind of man to stay out of action for too long. It'll be an easy way to ease him back into work. Anyway, you'll need him in there. Therefore Wasp _and_ Ioan will be going or you're not going at all Jack, assassins notice things that regular bodyguards don't notice, you know that. If things go wrong you'll all have a better chance of survival if you trust the others with you." Bella said in a tone that told me to either accept it or deal with the consequences of arguing further.

"Ioan won't like it." I shrugged but I had decided not to fight any more, some things just weren't worth it.

"Well, he owes you this favour. He told me about the deal that you made last night." Bella said I froze. It was time for that conversation so it seemed.

"You going to tell me what I've got to do to make up for that?" I asked.

"I told you _no_ jobs Jack! What did you think you were doing when Ioan asked you to be his bait?" Bella asked.

"That I was going to be bait. It wasn't my mark; I didn't kill him, I wasn't even there when he was killed!" I answered pointedly. It was the truth after all, Ioan had sent me out to the car to wait for him.

"And yet you still went in there packing!" She snapped at me. Either Ioan had told her or she just knew me well enough.

"I was once taught '_never leave yourself unprotected_.' I was covering my own ass." I bristled; I couldn't believe I had to justify wearing a gun to Bella. "I won't ever go into a situation like that, where there is danger like there was and not carry a weapon; I haven't since I was with…" My voice trailed off, I almost admitted to her that I trusted Riddick so totally to get there on time that I never, ever took a weapon with me besides my quick thinking. That would not have gone down well.

"It was a little too well planed for you not to have been thinking of James Bauer as _your_ mark." Bella was angry.

"It wasn't well planned at all. Well planned has seclude and reason behind it. I don't even know why I was needed as a lour. He knew he was going to die and he confronted me about it but even he wouldn't tell me why." I protested.

"Jack, I told you not to, I told you that you were not to work until I told you again. I needed Anna to be your top priority and instead you got off gallivanting as bait and putting yourself in danger!" She snapped.

"You think I had fun? I don't know why he was on your death list and believe it or not I don't want to know. All I know is that he made me feel damn guilty for whatever my part was in his death." I was starting to get angry and that did not improve Bella's temper. I really should have known better then to raise my voice but I've never been good at heeding the advice of my own head.

"Guilty? You don't even know the man." Bella snapped. "You should have obeyed me and told Ioan no! Then you wouldn't be standing in front of me and telling me that you feel guilty."

"Would you have? If you had been me and Ioan had asked you would you have said no?" I asked. "Bella, you can't take just anyone to be bait for you. You have to trust them to do their job and to be able to keep up a good act and not panic when the killing starts. If you can help it, you don't take a rookie, not unless you're really good, maybe someone like Wasp could but not Ioan, he's got his head in the clouds too often."

"I'm not going to argue with you over this any more." Bella snapped. "Understand, however, that you are walking a thin line that will take you back to hacking if you're not careful." It was the warning that I was expecting and I was just glad that it wasn't a complete dismissal.

"I'm one of your best three marksmen Bella! I haven't missed yet and you want to bench me for good?" I protested feeling suddenly at a loss as what to say or do next. It was the warning that I was expecting and I guess that I should just be glad that it wasn't a complete dismissal.

"No more arguing Jack. Just go home, relax for the rest of the day and decide which plan is most likely to get you into Butcher Bay and what you're going to say to Riddick when you get in there." Bella said. "Anna is your responsibility again from tomorrow morning. Understand?"

"Yeah." I nodded.

"Good. Ioan will drive you home; just don't keep him up all night."

"I won't, I don't feel like it." I replied; I was not in the mood.


	6. Chapter 5

Finally they gave me a break from work and i was able to spend some time on this story again...Thanks goes to Pendragon4, tamekabu, cateyes120 and Thug4Less. Thanks for the reviews and keep them coming, i like hearing what you think...

Thanks and onto the next part of the story.

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Chapter Five: Taking Precautions. 

"Imam."

"Jack, it's so good to hear from you again. Let me call Ziza, I am sure she'd like to talk to you."

"I'll talk to her later. Are you alone?" I couldn't see anyone in the background but that didn't mean anything; Imam often had people in his office, the only room in the house that had a visual communication screen.

"Yes. Jack, you are concerning me. What is the matter?" He was frowning. I felt bad that I was concerning him but it was necessary. I had come to that realisation when Ioan dropped me off home.

"I'm a little concerned myself to tell the truth. I got a letter from Riddick. Bella is sending me into Butcher Bay to see him."

"Into Butcher Bay? As a convict?"

"I don't know. We're getting Riddick out either way. I just don't know what is going to happen to me. I dunno how this is going to work itself out, I'm not sure of anything. But I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to get him out, being roughed up a little bit is worth it." I shrugged like it was a thought that didn't matter to me, inside the idea was terrifying. I had heard too much about slams not to be scared.

"Riddick would not like this Jack. He would not have it. He worked too hard to keep you away from such places." Imam was shaking his head, the glasses that he had let slide down his nose quickly pulled back into place as he stared hard at my image in front of him.

"I got him caught Imam." I practically whispered it.

"He still would not want that. It would be suicide for you to enter Butcher Bay as a convict Jack. The inmates would eat you alive before Riddick even knew that you were on the Planet let alone in cells with the rest of the murderers in triple max." He was rubbing his hands together the way he did when he got nervous over a sermon that he was about to deliver.

"Don't start making distinctions between them and me. Remember I am one of them, I am a murderer. You were quick enough to point that out to me last time that I saw you. Why do you care if I live or die in there? Because it will upset Ziza and your wife? Why?" I couldn't stop myself from snapping at him. I didn't want to but I did. It was easier to try and make him angry with me again then it was to try and examine my own feelings on the matter.

"That is only anger speaking Jack, anger from a fight that happened a long time ago and that I wish had never taken place. I see you as my daughter Jack, an equal in my heart to Ziza, I always have held you in such regard and you know that." He looked exasperated and I cringed. I didn't like hurting the holy man, not after everything that he had done for me. "The decisions that you have made, you have to live with but I do not wish you dead and I do not wish his fate on you. You would not survive triple max Jack, you and I both know that. Anyway, you have done a better job of trying to change then he ever did, you have channelled your aggression and lust for death into something that at least is noble."

"Noble. There is nothing noble left about me Imam. I wish there was." I sighed. It wasn't often that I admitted that to Imam or anyone else for that matter, part of me still wished that I could appear somewhat heroic in someone else's eyes but Anna's. Anna really didn't understand half the shit she found out.

"I do not believe that of you for a second Jack. The Vinceson child that you protect and care for is proof of that. You do not need to do half the things that you do for her or spend half as much time with her as you do. You have morals. Call off this suicide trip that Bella wishes to send you on."

"I won't be going alone and I won't call it off, I can't. But this isn't why I called today."

"Why did you call then?"

"To make arrangements." I bit my lip.

"What kind of arrangements?"

"For my will and a list of all my assets to be sent a head of time to you. You after all are my named next of kin." I shrugged.

"Jack, is this really necessary?" He was practically wringing his hands now. I hated to see him so uncomfortable but there were few people that I trusted as much as I did him.

"Yes it is. I will send them in an encrypted file as Riddick discussed with you when I was staying with him. On the confirmation of my death the encryption codes will be sent to you. I trust you to divide what I own as according to my wishes." I ran a hand through my hair. God I was tried!

"This is unnecessary! I will not have you talk about your death as if you are about to willingly walk right into it. Do not be a fool child!" He snapped at me.

"This is completely necessary and I am no fool." I slammed my hand into my desk before I took a moment to calm myself. "I am doing what I know is best to do. I'm taking precautions like I was taught to. I won't leave my family unprovided for. I will send the files to the address that Riddick set up. I know you still remember where that is. Please help me Imam." I pleaded with him.

"God help me child, I will try." There was a touch of exasperation in his voice but it was the worry etched into his face that made me feel bad.

"Can I speak with Ziza, I want to know if she enjoyed the weekend that her mother took her on."

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"Who'd you go and kill this time?" Anna frowned at me as I sat down next to her on the couch and watched her flick through the vid-channels.

"No one." I shrugged.

"Liar. Simon Carter turned up yesterday. Dead, a mushroom round in his head, or what was left of his head anyway, the coroner's pictures were pretty nasty. I don't know anyone else who uses Poppers with Mushroom rounds on my mother's staff but you Jack and none of her rivals would dare try and take out a mark she had put out herself." Anna replied. Damn the kid was really turning into a smart ass.

I unclipped my Wang-Liu handgun and laid it in my lap in plain view. I was making my point. Never in the time I had been her bodyguard had she actually seen me with a Popper in my hand or on my person. She looked at the gun and then up at me with distain. I kept the expression on my face blank.

"You might use a Wang-Liu to protect me but you don't use one when you're doing a job for my mother." She said scornfully. She knew too much about her mother's business in my opinion. No matter how powerful I was, I would never school my daughter to take over from me, not until she had been given a chance to explore other options for her life. Bella obviously didn't feel the same. "You use a Trans-D when you have a choice, most mercs and assassin's avoid them because they don't have the same appeal or brute force as a Wang-Liu. But then it's usually only snipers that try for the head shot."

"You're a smart ass, anyone ever tell you that?" I replied but she did have me there.

"I'm no more of a smart ass then you are. I heard my parents discussing the stunt you pulled with Ioan." She shrugged and I put my gun away quickly before the temptation in her eyes reached her fingers. Her mother might not mind her playing with a standard glock but them glocks didn't have to be voice and DNA activated so that the user didn't get a sometimes-lethal electrical charge put through them.

"I thought you didn't ever want to talk about my other job Anna." I said after a few minutes of silence lay between the twelve year old and myself.

"I don't, not really, I mean. It's just, well, it's not everyday that someone like Carter tries to kill me is it? I mean, I know that people who don't like my parents would happily see me dead but because of you and my mother's power, they don't often try." Anna had obviously been thinking hard as of late. I couldn't blame the kid; at one point in my life I had thought some of the same thoughts.

She had me standing between her and whatever motherfuckers there were out there that wanted to kill her because of her parents but she still wondered what would happen to her if I disappeared. I had, had Riddick between me and the motherfuckers that wanted to do me because of him and I had found out what I was like for the person that you relied on the most to disappear.

For me mercs had been my biggest worry, they were the only ones actually brave enough to try. For her, all it took was someone waving enough money around for someone to get trigger-happy.

"I know how you're feeling kid. It's not easy is it?" I put a hand on her shoulder in a gesture that was meant to be comforting. Anna looked over at me wide-eyed, for a moment betraying the worry and fear that she usually held so tight and out of the way from view. Then she just turned away, her eyes flicking to the vid-screen again. I knew she wasn't watching it.

"Mom said that she found Riddick for you. I did some reading about him." Anna shrugged off my hand nearly ten minutes later. The kid had her tongue back.

"I've told you about Riddick." I said frowning. There was no way that this was going to be good.

"Not everything you didn't. He was a worse person then that sniper that tried to kill me." She shook her head and clenched her jaw. She looked like her mother when she did that, all stubborn and sure that she was right.

"No Anna!" I shook my head right back at her. Where did she come off thinking that? Hadn't I explained well enough who Riddick was and what he had done for me? Anna turned off the vid-screen and moved to the little secretary desk that was in a corner of her living room. She opened a drawer and pulled out a number of sheets of paper.

"One hundred and seventeen human based crimes Jack." Anna held some of the paper up in her right hand. "Compare that with thirty-seven." She held the rest of the stack in her left hand so that I could see them both in their obvious thickness difference.

"Do some math with me okay Anna? You're good at math; this should be easy for you. Write off thirty-seven of those deaths, I know he didn't kill them because I was there when they all died. Then knock off any charges of rape or child molesting, then take off the murders of entire families, children, indefensible women. It wasn't him." I was breathing a little hard. "I've told you this before and I'm telling you again. Riddick killed when he had to or had a reason to. There are a good number of murders in there that you would have to put on me because he wouldn't have had to kill them if I hadn't gotten in the way."

"I can't believe that you're idolising this man!" Anna was looking at me the picture of cold fury, her hands in tight little fists at her side, the papers crunched so much that they were curled up around her wrists. She had too much respect for me to dare make any more demands from me, not verbally but the look on her face was still a look of demand. I took a deep breath.

"Let me explain this to you one more time Anna. Your mother found the man that trained me and half raised me. He's in Butcher Bay, a triple max slam not so far from here." I answered, picking my words carefully.

"Richard B. Riddick." Anna growled at me and I nodded, not at all worried by the child's anger. "I know this stuff. You've told me this stuff."

"For once in your life kid shut up and listen. You want to know what makes Riddick a better man then Carter, don't interrupt me. The night he was captured and taken to The Bay, we were trying to erase some sensitive information about myself that your father has only recently been able to take care of. Another make broke into that building that night and set off the alarm. Riddick got me out of there but was unable to get himself out too." I explained and then looked at her. "He was always pulling my ass out of messes."

"So that explains why you love him so much but not why he's such a boy scout in your eyes." Anna said, her fists now planted on her narrow, boyish hips.

"The rest explains itself Anna. If your mother told you that she found Riddick for me then she's told you that she is going to help me. You know that we're planning on busting him out if we can, why do you need me to say it?" I shrugged.

"No it doesn't explain anything!" She shook her head. "It doesn't. It's illegal Jack, it's not possible, you're a bodyguard, not a person that breaks dangerous criminals out of prison! He's a murderer Jack, you said so yourself!"

"I'm not just a bodyguard Anna, you know what I am, we've already spoken about that today and I already know how you feel about that." I said calmly.

"But you're about to try and break a very dangerous man out of prison. He'll kill Jack; he has done may times before and horribly. Even with the murders and rapes off that you say he didn't commit, he's still a very bad, dangerous man. He likes to kill Jack, he loves it, he belongs in prison, don't you think they put him there for a very good reason. He deserves worse then prison." Anna snapped, her voice steadily rising to a near hysterical pitch along with my temper, which I felt I had held in quite a good grip. "He really deserves to just be…"

"ENOUGH!" I roared and Anna flinched. I was not going to have a twelve year old tell me that Riddick deserved to be put to death, especially not a twelve year old who didn't know shit about what he had gone through for me. "Enough." I whispered. "I never wanted to speak of this again Anna but you're forcing me to. Sit down." I said, hoping that my voice was once more as clam as I meant it to be.

"Jack, really, it's okay, we don't need to talk." Anna shook her head slowly, it seemed that perhaps she had calmed down a little too.

"Anna sit down." I said and Anna sat slowly, not resisting my command this time. "Listen and listen carefully, I'm only going to tell you this once because I don't like talking about it. After that, if you still think I'm being reckless and careless then you can talk to your father and he can find me a replacement as your bodyguard. Understand?"

"Y-yes." Anna stammered.

"Good." I nodded. "When I was fourteen I was in a bad accident, not many people survived it…" I told her everything, I kept taking even through her eyes grew wide with horror and her skin paled slightly. I gave her the details – all of them, even the ones that made me feel uncomfortable again.

By then end of my tale there was silence in the room. Anna was looking at the floor and then when it was clear to her that I had finished she looked back up at me. "I'm sorry Jack, I didn't know." She asked grimacing; her voice quiet and I shrugged.

"I know you didn't, it's not like I advertise those few days to just anyone."

"Imam was there with you?" She asked.

"Yes. That's how Imam came to adopt me but I didn't stay with Imam, I went traveling with Riddick. He practically raised me, taught me the things he felt I needed to know and in the end saved me from ending up in slam with him. He's not a bad person Anna."

She was looking at me with those big wide-eyes. The look on her face one of trust again. I only hoped that I was still right, a lot changes in five years; I just hoped that he hadn't changed into the monster that Anna seemed to think that he was.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Job Description

"Morning Bella." I sat down in the seat in front of her desk.

"I thought that we had talked about not upsetting my valets." Bella looked down at the weapons that were on her desk.

It wasn't like there were that many. Hell, they weren't even my best. If those pussy valets shit their pants at a Short-Remy shotgun, two machine-pistols with extendable stocks, and a single Fhajad anti-armour sniper rifle then maybe she needed new ones.

"Too much can happen on the way here for me not to bring protection. Anyway, if your valets are that spooked," I grinned, "Maybe you need new ones. It's not like I try to conceal them."

"You wouldn't want you car wreaked, that's why you don't conceal them." Bella shrugged.

"You have a point there." I nodded "The armoury said that you wanted to see me and somehow I don't think that it's about my weapons."

"How astute of you." Bella smiled sweetly. "Anna and I will be leaving the compound tomorrow in preparation for your departure to Butcher Bay with Wasp and Ioan. I'm taking her up to the Mountain Resort. James will be staying here; he says that he has too many important cases on at the moment to leave."

"Do you need me to gather a security team for Anna?" I asked.

"I've made all the arrangements necessary. Preston will take over as her body guard until your return but tomorrow you and Wasp will take us up to the mountain." Bella replied.

"That will be a good warm up for the old man." I said, smiling. Wasp wasn't exactly old but he was the oldest assassin on Bella's staff, a man who I had a lot of respect for and a rather sarcastic relationship with.

"I'm sure." Bella nodded. "You and I however need to speak about your plans for Butcher Bay."

"What arrangements have you made?" I asked, cracking the knuckles of my hands as I waited for her to reply.

"I will be sending my plans to Butcher Bay this evening. Personally I don't like the idea of you going into Butcher Bay as a convict but I don't see how else this can be pulled off. If you want, you can back out." Bella looked at me seriously and I bit my lip before shaking my head decisively.

"I'm not backing out Bella, I'm sorry."

"Alright, then listen carefully…"

--------

I hated coming to this part of town, hated it! The slums, men walking around packing heavier then I was and women wandering around the streets wearing practically nothing. I turned heads in this area for two reasons; one I wasn't one of those skanks and two I was well known as an assassin, no one that I knew of ever said it out loud but they all knew it and gave me a bit of a wide berth because of it.

Ever since my first visit, I had played my part around these parts well. I walked around dressed as most of the other more dangerous men did and this night was no different. I looked plain mean; from the scowl on my face to my full length black trench coat, with my hands shoved in my pockets, and the collar turned up around my neck to my regular black combat boots.

I never came this way without a purpose and that purpose lay in a little back alley herbal remedy store called Chang's.

Chang himself was a very old, little man originally from the China on Old Earth, he was practically blind, under five feet tall and looked far more fragile than I was sure that he actually was but then I knew how looks could be deceiving. Chang did very little when it came to the running of his store, he left that to a young man called Colin and Colin had a business going that I was more than interested in. Chang only did medical consults and damn was he good.

Colin on the other hand wasn't so good at the job that he was hired for but he had his hands in the illegal weapons trade. He was the sort that was useful to know even if you wouldn't really trust him with more than your first name. I had gotten more then my fair share of weapons from him and I hoped that he would come in handy once more.

The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end and suddenly I became very alert. I slowed my breathing but not my pace and I heard the light ripping sound of rubber grips on concrete. I was being followed.

I kept walking, I knew the rules around here, I knew that if I stopped and made it known that I knew I was being followed then I'd more then likely be jumped when I wasn't expecting it. The motherfucker probably didn't even know who I was. They never jumped me when they were at all suspect of my… abilities.

I turned a corner intending to double back on myself but was never given the chance to make any more of a move then that. The hand I had been expecting snaked out and grabbed my left shoulder. I moved quickly then, reaching over with my right hand as I stepped into him. He wasn't expecting me to throw him over my back and into the wall we were next to.

"Who are you?" He didn't answer me, just looked at me wide eyed and I saw the tremor run through his body. I growled at him as I took in his bedraggled appearance and the purplish blue rings around his iris.

I shook my head, a desperate Narthraix junky. The drug had taken the medical world by storm about five years ago, it acted like morphine in many ways only it had more uses than just in simple pain relief, it actually helped cure a whole lot of diseases and then they found out some of it's more interesting side effects.

One out of five patients put on Narthraix got these purplish blue rings around their irises and started to see things, act out violently and in worse case scenarios become not only self destructive but intent on killing anything that moved or breathed. There was no cure except for to continue to use the drug, an option that was far too expensive for health systems to even have considered and it was now illegal.

There where however a few very smart, not so pleasant and enterprising people out there in the underworld that had gotten their hands on samples of the drug before it was cleared from the shelves. Those people had been reproducing the drug and selling it to those who felt they needed it as a last ditch effort for a cure, only now they had tweaked the drug to become addictive.

"Give me one reason not to kill you right now?" I growled, my right hand twisting his arm in a way that made him squeal as my left hand moved aside my coat to reveal my shoulder holsters.

"You're one of them, I didn't know, I swear I didn't know." He whined and inwardly I cringed but I growled at him instead.

"I'm one of them, what's that?"

"A Reaper." He whimpered, his eyes darting around the alleyway and his body twitching in a way that I couldn't help but find repulsive.

"Don't ever fuck with me again or I _will_ kill you without asking questions." I snapped, giving his arm a little jerk before releasing him, turning on my heel and continuing the way I had been going before I had felt his presence behind me.

I had so many names now for my profession that it was ridiculous. In the real world I was a bodyguard, someone trained in self-defence and offence for the purpose of protecting a client. In the underworld I was known as an assassin and one of the most skilled in the business, at least in this part of the planetary systems. And here in the slum world of ordinary people I was a Reaper, a taker or giver of life and people left me alone so I would continue to give them a chance to live out their meagre existences.

"Jack." Chang was the one at the counter as I pushed the door open and walked in.

"Good evening Mr. Lou." I smiled at him as I moved forward to lean on the counter.

"Your shoulder bothering you again?" He asked me, his hand reaching for my left wrist and checking my pulse.

"Just a little stiff sometimes." I replied.

"Take off that jacket of yours and come back through to the exam room, let me take a look at it."

Chang didn't wait for a reply before shuffling off toward the end of the counter and toward the only exam room in the building. I always had a hard time trying to say no to Chang, part of the problem was that he was hard of hearing, or at least had selectively permeable hearing; I never was sure which idea was worse.

I followed him round, peeling off my jacket so I was sitting in a black short sleeved t-shirt on his exam table as he rubbed a liniment of some sort into his old knobbly hands. He looked pointedly at my shoulder holster and I sighed pealing that off too. Only then did he grab my left wrist again and he spent the next five minutes or so manipulating my left shoulder joint, making hemming and hawing noises and muttering little words in a language that I didn't understand.

"Do I get the all clear, doc?" I asked him as he finished his examination and shuffled out of the room. That was the only signal anyone ever got that he had finished with them.

"I am surprised that you don't get shot more often carrying that arsenal around." He said as he dug around his shelves looking for something. I shrugged.

"There will always be other badasses out there looking to prove their bigger badasses then me, I'll take my chances and keep the protection. So how bad's the shoulder this time."

"Surgery these days is more than impressive but although they can make it appear as though there is no scar tissue, they can not fix the tissue all together. I want you to start using this regularly and come see me in a week." He handed me a pot of cream and I smiled at him.

"Sure thing. Only we'll have to make the appointment for a month, I'm gonna be outta town on business. You know how it goes."

"Yes indeed. Anything else for you?"

"Colin in?" I asked him.

"I'll get him for you."

"Thanks."

Unlike Chang, Colin was a tall, weedy looking man with greasy blonde hair that plastered itself down the back of his neck and eyes that looked a little too spaced out to actually focus. The two men were rarely found to be in the same room as one another.

"You're here for your boots aren't you?" He smiled.

"Among other things." I answered him.

"Other things?" Colin looked positively gleeful. "Step into my office." His arm made a sweeping gesture and I followed him back around into the exam room that I had only just left.

"I need to get some weapons into a triple max, what have you got for me?" I sat down on the exam table and looked at him as he paced the floor in front of me.

"Give me a blood sample and a day to teach you how to put a Wang Liu together then I can help you get one of them into a place like that. But that's about the only weapon on the market that would be in the least bit handy against the guards in there that you could get in and even then only in _very_ small pieces." He shrugged. "But then I have a feeling that you already knew that."

"I knew about the Wang. What if I told you that the weapons didn't have to be effective against the guards?"

"Then I say that we might have something to talk about."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

----------

"So you went to Chang's last night?" Wasp said the first words that he had said to me since we had gotten into the vehicle behind the one that Bella and Anna were travelling in.

Preston and Bella's personal bodyguard, Ephraim Peters, were in the vehicle in front and so far everything had gone to plan. We were at least out of the city bounds. There was still a lot of traffic on this particular stretch of aerial highway. It was the main intra-city commuter line for the entire continent from east to west. There were a dozen lanes that were denoted visually by hovering yellow lane-markers spaced out at forty-foot intervals and electronically by yellow lane strips in the navigational computer. Everyone was driving in identical cars, M-Mart Breez', illegally modified to provide far better protection than the hundreds of other Breez' on the aerial highways. The four-door, mid-sized aero-vehicle was one of the most popular on the planet and perfect for those trying to travel incognito.

"You know my shoulder's never been quite right. Chang fixed me up with some cream and mumbled a bit about the amazing ineffectiveness of modern surgery." I replied with a shrug, watching as a commuter bus zipped past us at over a hundred miles per hour.

"Which is why you walked out with a pretty interesting looking bag." He said.

"Keeping an eye on me now? I didn't realise that that was apart of your re-hab." I said somewhat testily. I did not like being checked up on at the best of times but I had told Ioan not so long ago that I had stopped going to Colin for weapons or weapon ideas.

Wasp shrugged, pulling a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket pocket as I rolled down the window for him, not bothering to take my eyes off the road in front of me.

The motorcade took an off-ramp on the left and I followed as he lit his cigarette and took a long drag. The off-ramp ascended in a wide loop for nearly a mile before levelling out approximately three hundred feet above the main line and continuing to the northwest.

"I thought you said you'd quit."

He shrugged.

"You've taught me most of what I know about this game and now you're not talking to me because I might have gone back to Chang's to see Colin, you introduced me to the man and he's useful." I asked sighing as he dug in his pocket and pulled out the packet of cigarette's and offered one to me. "Unlike you, I actually kicked the habit." I shook my head.

"Good for you." Was all he said as he replaced them.

"Are you actually pissed off at me or the fact that you're prize student is actually going to take her life into her own hands and go into Butcher Bay as a convict?" I snapped after a few moments of silence.

He shrugged again.

There were times that I thought that Wasp and Riddick must have swapped notes on how to royally piss me off. When Wasp didn't like something you chose he never came right out and said it, he just shrugged an awful lot. Riddick always grunted. At least Wasp treated me like an adult and let me make my choices. "I know I can handle myself old man, I'll have Riddick. I don't think that Ioan is ready to be thrown into a prison like that." I said softly.

"And you are?"

"I've got Riddick." I replied with a shrug that was meant to convince him that I wasn't at all worried. I was after all only trying to take a leaf out of his book.

"Was that why you were at Chang's last night?"

"I thought that I already explained about my shoulder." I shook my head. I should have known that Wasp wasn't about to give up the easily. He never did, he would know he was right and until he actually got verbal confirmation of the fact he could be about as persistent as the pest that he was nicknamed for.

"If I believed that Jack then we wouldn't be having this conversation."

The motorcade came to a halt at an ascension stop in a mid-sized town that I couldn't remember the name of. We were surrounded by high-rises to either side and waited as a number of cars ascended to our altitude before dashing off.

"I know." I shrugged just as an impact from behind threw me forward into the wheel and an impact from my side of the vehicle slammed it into the wall.

"_Collision warning. Aft and starboard turbines damaged. Angle of descent… not good."_

"No _shit_!" I screamed at the computer as I struggled with the steering wheel.

"_Emergency turbines engaged. Emergency restraints engaged."_

Suddenly the seat was like a hospital gurney for madmen. Everything except my arms was bound to seat. I couldn't even turn my head to scream incoherently at Wasp. I was an okay pilot but this shit was out of my league. The world went crazy as the Breez' seemed to roll down the fucking wall of high-rise. I resisted the urge to scream like a banshee, it sounded like Wasp was asleep beside me, and fought to assist the computer in righting the vehicle before we hit dirt. I was only half successful and I knew it a split-second before we hit the cement on the passenger side. Impact foam blocked out the world in that split-second but it only prevented our insides from being turned to mush.

My left shoulder was jammed into the steering wheel and my breath had been forced from my chest from the impact of the landing. Steamy smoke was bellowing around us and I was pretty sure that I was going to have a black eye and some interesting bruising around my face.

"Wasp?"

"Jack. I'm pinned. You have to get your ass out of this vehicle and back up there." I looked in his direction but one eye was already swelling almost shut plus the smoke and partially solidified foam made it damn hard to see him anyway.

"You sure you're alright?" I asked.

"Do your fucking job and get the hell back up there."

"Yes sir." I said as I put my shoulder into opening the door.

I crawled out in time to watch the vehicle that Bella and Anna were in plummet to the ground only a few hundred meters away. Three black vehicles landed around them and I started running. It took me about thirty seconds to pull out my Wang and the pair of wrap-around, electronic shades that were linked to the weapon. I would need that edge with only one good eye. The door to their car opened. Bella stumbled out, her arms wrapped around Anna, both of them covered in the same foam I was.

The men quickly separated Bella and Anna and that's when it happened. Everything slowed to a crawl and my heartbeat became a bass drum that I would dance my dance to. I lifted my Wang to the side of my face.

"Precision; Ten-milly." I growled and the weapon clicked and beeped.

Targeting cursors appeared on every available target in my field of view thanks to my shades. I would have to be careful because the cursors were on my boss, her daughter, and even the vehicles. If I hit the vehicle targets it was likely that something vital would blow the damn things up.

All of these thoughts passed through my mind as I brought the Wang-Liu up and prepared to fire.

My heartbeat kept me focused as I watched them separate mother from daughter. Bella was thrown up against the vehicle that she had emerged from, the mouth of a particle weapon pressed against her forehead. Anna was thrown over the shoulder of a man and was being slowly being carried away from the main group. Using soft voice commands and moving more cautiously now, I disengaged the cursor targets on the most volatile parts of the vehicle and my two safety concerns.

The man carrying Anna looked around him, saw me with my Wang Liu in hand and took off at a sprint.

"Aww, fuck no!" I breathed as I opened fire, my perfectly programmed spray of ammunition hitting a good three of the men, one of them being the one that had attacked Bella.

It was a good diversion, as all eyes turned from the seemingly terrified Bella to me, it appeared that I was the only one to see the calculatingly murderous look in her eyes. I dropped belly down on the ground as they returned fire with a mixture of projectile and low-end energy weapons and thanked whatever deity there was that it had passed over my head instead of hitting me. Obviously whatever weaponry they were using wasn't heat-seeking. I was up on my feet a second later, my Wang shooting a semi-automatic spray again, injuring most of its targets but not mortally. They would be needed for questioning later.

It was only when I saw Bella with particle weapon in hand that I made the slight change of direction I needed to follow after the man that had taken Anna. He was about seven hundred feet in front of me and my little charge, who had been thrown carelessly over his shoulder, was flailing in such a way as to make his flight very difficult.

"Jack!" She screamed and doubled her efforts to be released when she saw me running after them.

I didn't say anything back; I needed all the breath that I was allowed to keep up the hellish pace that I had forced myself into. Anna was only a hundred meters away from me and it was beginning to feel like I would never get to her. My lungs felt like they were burning with every breath and I was pretty damn sure I was tasting blood. The muscles in my legs felt like jelly and I kept forcing them on.

At least Riddick had never had to deal with kidnapping; at least when I was with him everyone had just been trying to outright kill me. I couldn't even shoot the fucker because I was as likely to hit Anna the way he was zigzagging everywhere as hit the target I was aiming for. Even my pre-programmed targeting system wasn't quite fast enough to keep up with the motherfucker carrying her, he was being too random.

There was no way I was taking the risk. It didn't matter how good I was, proving I could make a near impossible shot wasn't worth the possibility of a mistake.

"Jack!" Anna's arm was stretched out to me and I did the only thing I could think of.

I shouted, "Roll!" at the top of my lungs and dove, wrapping my arms around her captor's legs as I fell, bringing them both to the ground with me. Anna did as she was told and rolled out of the way as his booted foot connected with my shoulder and he tried to get his other leg out of my grasp.

I clung on as tight as I could as I watched Anna pulled herself to her feet and start running. I moved my head just in time as the man's boot came my way again, only this time letting go of him and rolling over to one side.

I went for my gun and he kicked out, striking me in the side before I could get close. The air left my lung with a 'whoosh' and whoever he was was at my throat in a second, his fingertips pressing down on my larynx before I could get out of the way.

Before I lost all ability to move, I clubbed him in the side of the head with my fist as I brought my knee up sharply under him, jamming my knee in the inside of his thigh. He rolled half off me, dazed, as I pulled in a breath and my palm shot forward like a piston against his jaw, getting him off of me completely.

He rolled over onto his back and I pounced much like a cat would onto a bird it had just brought down. I straddled him, both knees under his armpits, and straight-armed him twice more before laying my forearm across his neck and turning his face so that he had no choice but to look at me.

"No one tries to kidnap my charge ever!" I rasped. "And nobody, you get this, tries to kill me!" I ground out, reaching into my left shoulder holster for my .50-caliber revolver and pressing the barrel to his forehead. "You don't get to mess with her without paying the price fucker."

"Jack…?" Anna's voice was small behind me; she had obviously doubled back when she saw that I had the situation under control. I was going to have to teach the kid a thing or two about not going back and hope the lesson stuck better with her then it ever had with me.

"Walk past Anna, don't look at me or him, just walk and don't look back. I'll be right behind you." I said softly, my throat hurting more then I cared to admit and my shoulders and ribcage ached where he had managed to kick me. I guess I wasn't as invincible as I sometimes felt that I was.

Anna walked on past, her little hands in fists but I could see her trembling as she moved. He twitched under me, his hand snaking out to the right for my Wang that had been thrown from me in the fall.

"Anna run!" I yelled as his hand gripped the grip of my Wang and I threw myself to the side.

That scream was awful, the pop-crackle of charring flesh was worse, but the smell was nearly unbearable. I could see Anna's whole body convulse but she didn't turn around, just stopped dead in her tracks, the shudder running from her shoulders right down her body. For a moment I thought her legs were going to give way but she managed to stand. I was thankful for that.

That was the thing with the Wang-Liu's. They took a miniscule blood sample every time you picked it up by the grip. If your DNA didn't match what it was programmed to accept it put a lethal electric charge through the body of the one holding it before they could realize their mistake. Unless you were pretty huge it was almost a guaranteed death.

I turned and retrieved my weapon from the corpse, my eye lingering perhaps for a few moments too long on his twisted, charred face. I shook my head as I replaced it in my shoulder holster and moved away. I had never seen the effects of the Wang's self-protection programming; I never wanted to see them again.

"Come on Anna." I said but the girl didn't move as I made it to her side. "Anna?" She looked blankly up at me and then her eyes rolled slightly and her legs gave way. I scooped her up, ignoring the protests from my muscles and started to walk. "Come on Anna, gotta talk to me kid." I kept saying as I slowly walked back the way that we had run. "Anna!" I snapped, giving her a small shake as the crash site came into view.

"Jack." Anna's voice was small. "You can't go now Jack, please!"

"We'll work it out kid." I said in answer. "Can you walk? I think your mom's going to be a bit freaked out if I have to carry you the whole way."

"I'm just too heavy for you to carry." Anna said almost mockingly and I smile and then winced as the spilt in my lip stung, at least the kid had her sense of humour fully intact.

"I'm carrying you, aren't I?" I asked her as I put her back down and we stood still for a moment to make sure she could stand okay before moving off.

"You were." She replied, reaching for my hand and giving it a tug as she started walking.

-------

I know that it's been along time since the last time I posted a chapter…urg, the journey in my life that made the time frame so long is too complicated to get into. Major thanks to Thug4less, I think I'm all cool calling you my faithful beta by now :), who once again has helped keep me true to the characters I'm playing with and has come up with some awesome technical description and weapons. Also thanks to a, Pendragon4, Saismaat and Cateyes120 and everyone else who has reviewed through this story so far. I hope you enjoyed. Please feel free to review.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Arrival

"You look like shit Jack." Ioan looked almost a little horrified as I walked into my front room, tossing my bag down on the floor by the coffee table.

"Thanks." I said dryly, I had looked worse two days earlier, at least my left eye wasn't swollen shut but the bruises on my neck and across my right cheekbone were nearly black. He turned completely in the chair he was sitting in and his frown deepened.

"You seen a doc yet?" He asked.

"No." I replied, slowly raising my left shoulder up and rotating it. It still hurt like hell thanks to the lack of bloody padding on the Breez's steering column. "I'm making tea, you want anything?"

"I'll make the bloody tea, you sit your ass down." He said with a shake of his head.

I didn't have the energy or the heart to protest at that moment so I not only sat down on my couch but curled up on my good side and pulled a pillow into my stomach. We were supposed to leave tomorrow and I was not only feeling like shit but looking it too.

Anna had been more then upset when I had refused to change my plans. I hated seeing her afraid but the Mountain Resort was more then safe for the kid without me needing to be there and Bella hadn't seen any reason why plans should be changed. She hadn't said two words to me after I decided that I was still going away, to be honest I don't think that I was really expecting much else from her.

What the hell was I doing? On my drive back down from the mountain (this time with Wasp driving) I had had more then enough time to contemplate the world I was about to enter. I almost argued myself out of the act at one point. But I guess I know myself well enough to know I would never have forgiven myself if I had given up the opportunity to actually see Riddick again. Busting him out was just an added bonus, if our plan ran right.

"Did you fuck up your shoulder again?" Ioan asked after he had handed me a steaming hot mug and placed a hand on my left shoulder and I flinched slightly at his touch.

"So what if I did?" He was right, it hurt like hell to put pressure on it and I had reduced myself to tears the night before as I forced myself to lay into a punching bag.

"You expect to survive Butcher Bay with a fucked up shoulder and no fucking time to put together the weapons that I know you're going to be hiding in some rather interesting places?" He asked.

"Fuck you." I hissed pulling away from him and sitting up properly as he sat down on the couch next to me. "Who invited you into my home anyway?"

"The spare key that _you_ gave me." He shrugged.

"Fuck off."

"You're in a foul mood."

"State the obvious." I growled taking a gulp of my tea that made my eyes water. I hadn't expected it to be as hot as it was and the roof of my mouth was now more then protesting, as was the tip of my tongue.

"I don't want to have to drag you're beaten, broken body out of that hell hole." He said his tone anything but light, he was out for a fight tonight and I was not in the mood to give in.

"All you have to do is look out for yourself you fuck-wit. Leave me to me. I didn't ask Bella to make you go, in fact I asked her not too but this was her idea, so live with it." I huffed as I got to my feet. "I'm going to bed, don't fucking bother even coming into my room if all you're going to do is pick a fight."

"Jack, I…"

"We have to leave in the morning. Don't." I shook my head. "Have some food, put your head together and then come to bed. Believe it or not, the slightly battered look that I'm sporting is going to be more of a help then a hindrance."

With that I turned and left the room, mug still firmly held in-between my hands. I had forgotten in the rush of the attack the arrangements that Wasp and I had made with Ioan for the day before our departure. He was to come around to my place, Wasp would pick us up and then we would head to the ship. There had been talk between Wasp and I about roughing Ioan and I up a bit so that our cover story held with the guards, now it didn't appear that I would need any doctoring.

I was close to meltdown. Wasp knew it, had had to hold me together the night before at the Mountain resort. They wouldn't have been prepared for the whirlwind that was me there. It took a lot to push me close to that edge and a lot had happened, my imminent reunion with Riddick, and the attack on my boss and her daughter not to mention the stress that coming up with answers for Anna had put me under.

I had paced and ranted in front of him for nearly two hours before abruptly leaving the room without him having said hardly two words the whole time and then we hadn't spoken on the whole ride home. I felt like a ticking bomb.

What a role model I was for Anna anyway. I was an assassin, even if I was somewhat of an unlikely assassin. I killed people for a living, which was the beginning and the end of it. The man that I admired most in my life was Richard B. Riddick, a convicted mass murderer and many times escaped prisoner. In my opinion I had nothing that she should look up to left in my life.

I didn't break down often and I didn't often in front of anyone. I hated the way I got; it was like a psychotic meltdown most of the time. I went from extreme anger to inconsolable crying in the time it takes to click your fingers. I hate it, I hate everything about it but it's my own fault. I don't talk about shit until I don't have any room to bottle the stuff up anymore and then I erupt. Ioan was pushing me close to eruption and I was not prepared to go through it all.

Not that he couldn't handle me when I got that way, he could, it was just that there were far too many breakables around this time. The last time that I had had a meltdown, I had had to replace a couple of mugs and a vase. He was pretty good at keeping me and my things very safe.

The first time I had one of my meltdowns; there was no one around to protect my possessions. I had nearly destroyed my home before I came to the crying part. Thank god I had stayed out of the study that held all my computer equipment, replacing that would have been a bitch. It wasn't like I blacked out or anything, I knew exactly what I was doing, I just got violent and that was that. Nothing was safe from me then. I had given a few nasty black eyes in my time and Ioan swore that I had cracked one of his ribs once, but as far as I was concerned that was fair game when he started picking at my shit.

I pulled a fresh set of boxers and a clean jumper from the drawer that held my night things in it and pushed aside Ioan's bag that he had just dumped on my bed before getting dressed. It was technically still early afternoon, only about three thirty but I was tired. Who can blame me I guess, I was healing after all and I knew what was to come, just over a week of near sleepless nights was going to be a bitch.

I pulled a book out of my bookshelf, closed the curtains and put on my bedside light before crawling in and curling up on my right side with my book open at the first page. Sleep never came for me right away and then only fitfully. At least this way I could rest.

---

I don't remember Ioan coming to bed that night. But I remember waking both of us on a number of occasions as I fought with my demons. It seemed that after a while, whenever I closed my eyes all I could see was Riddick bound and chained, horse-bit back in his mouth and his silver eyes looking at me accusingly.

"Come on Jack, time to wake up." Ioan slid his hands up and down my arms and I yawned as I rolled toward him and tried to hide my face in his shoulder instead. My head was throbbing in time to my heartbeat and my shoulder ached in a way that it hadn't since the days after my run in with the particle weapon that first hurt it. "I thought you wanted to see Riddick again." Ioan said in response to my reaction.

"I do." I sighed. I shook my head then groaned slightly as my neck, which was stiff from the funny way I had slept on it cracked in protest to the sharp movement. "You shouldn't have stayed last night, I'm sorry."

"Why? Because you were up almost all night having nightmares?" He asked as I sat up then got out of bed, hugging my baggy jumper a little tighter around my own body as I did so, I had forgot to turn the timer on for the heater in my annoyance the night before.

"Yes." I said as he got up and reached for his clothes.

"Am I the best friend you've got around here or what? 'Cause I can't call myself much of a friend at all if I couldn't deal with the nightmares and as I remember it, they weren't as bad as normal." He shrugged as he pulled a t-shirt over his head. "Wasp will be waiting for us, come on." He hurried me along.

"Thanks Ioan." I gave him a genuine smile and grabbed the bag that I had packed a few days before.

It took me less then ten minutes to get myself fully dressed and ready to go but they were ten minutes filled with a seemingly endless silence. I guess I had too much on my mind to put it into words. I just wanted to get going and see Riddick and deal with whatever reaction he had as I tried to keep myself alive.

I was risking hell of a lot if he wanted nothing to do with me.

"Stop thinking about it." Ioan demanded as I zipped up the synthetic leather jacket that I had pulled from my closet.

"I'm not! I'm just tired." I snapped, damn him for reading my wayward thoughts. "Come on, Wasp is waiting." I mimicked his sentence of earlier to stop further comment on the subject of me and my bloody nightmares.

"Yeah, yeah. Smart Alec." He chuckled and led the way out of my room as I put my hair in a ponytail. "Don't worry about your sleep, Wasp is putting us in Cryo for the next four days to give your body more time to recoup and not let your mind play things through too much."

I tensed, all my muscles seeming to freeze at once as he spoke and a cold sweat broke out all over my body. Fear, pure and simple. It was running through all of my muscles and try as I might, I couldn't move.

The last time I had been put in Cryo-sleep I had nearly died from the subsequent crash and then was nearly eaten alive by winged monsters. I hadn't let Riddick ever put me in Cryo-sleep in case something went wrong again and since he didn't particularly like it much either, it was never a real issue.

"Jack?" Ioan stated quickly. I must have looked as pale as I felt and perhaps as woozy too because his hand was suddenly on my good shoulder and he looked concerned.

"I'm not going to go into Cryo-sleep." I snapped forcing myself to move again. I opened the front door to see Wasp waiting for us already. "I'm not going into Cryo-sleep." I repeated to him forcefully, not loosing the feeling that at any moment I was going to toss my cookies.

Wasp was a tall man, close to six foot six inches tall and skinny, so skinny that he made me sick with envy sometimes. That man could eat and it just never touched him, he hardly had work out or anything and still he managed to keep all weight off. I always figured that he must make me look like a blimp and it's not exactly like I weigh a lot. He wasn't exactly the most talkative kinda guy and his light brown eyes and sandy-blonde hair made him look enthusiastic and younger then he really was. He took a last drag on his cigarette and looked at me seriously.

"Not my idea of fun either but Bella wants you rested and capable when we get there." He explained with a patient look on his face that reminded me that he was clearly older then me, being somewhere near his early forties. Who the hell knew his real age?

"Wasp, I'm not joking. I can't." I knew that even though I didn't look it, I sounded afraid as Ioan armed the alarm and locked up my home for me. But I didn't care about the fear. It was real and it would keep me alive. Riddick always said that fear was an instinct necessary for survival.

"Come on. Worry about it later. We have a shuttle to catch." Ioan nudged me on.

We got into Wasp' Breez, Ioan took the backseat, while I rode shotgun. On the way to that spaceport we talked, I wish we hadn't. Ioan didn't join into Wasp's and my hushed and heated whispers and it was a good thing too. I didn't feel like being ganged up on.

"I don't think you understand just how dangerous this is Jack." Wasp hissed at me.

"I fucking do. I lived with an escaped prisoner that always said he would rather end up dead then back in slam. I understand. I'm just surprised that Bella is helping us."

"Helping you." He corrected.

"I know. She thinks she can make me easier to control and get Riddick on her staff if she helps him break out. I'm not that naive. It would never work though Wasp. He wouldn't take second best and he doesn't take orders. It's his way or the highway. I know." I shrugged. "Worst case scenario, he tells me to fuck off and I have to fend for myself for a little over a week. I am capable of looking after myself."

"That's arrogance speaking Jack."

"Arrogance would be claiming that I would be able to get in and walk out of there in better condition then I'm in now at the end of the ten days if he decides that he has it in for me. I'm not that stupid." I shook my head.

"Arrogance is thinking that he's going to be willing to help you survive. Be smart now." Wasp said. "You haven't seen him for four _years_; you don't know what he's like anymore. Prison changes people."

I let the silence spin out between us. Wasp wasn't trying to be malicious; I knew he was just speaking out of experience. He'd spent time in slam in his younger years. But Riddick's letter had been written in such a way that was just one hundred percent the man that I knew and as much as I tried, because it was the smart thing to do, I just couldn't detach my emotions from the whole thing.

"Are you alright, kid?" Wasp asked and I looked sharply at him, I hadn't heard that phrase for years and Riddick and been the last person to use it.

"Yeah." I nodded, adding dryly as an after thought. "Never better."

Wasp pulled into the private, underground parking lot of our astonishingly well-connected employer. Flying would have made the trip shorter but there was a no-fly zone of thirty miles around the spaceport. We rode a lift up to level three and, walked through the central terminal, and then took a tram to F-Wing. It was the wing where all the Mercs and assorted bounty hunters were docked. Stepping off the tram was like stepping into a circus of steroid-shooting, tattooed, pierced meatheads armed to the teeth. Of course there were military police all over the place even more heavily armed, and even Combat-Mech's at checkpoints, as well as the regular spaceport security forces. I was probably the most feminine looking woman there despite the condition of my face.

_Isn't that a switch_, I grinned as we continued toward docking pad fifteen.

Finally we made it to the docking pad. It was an enormous circle, with a launch tower at its center, with probably fifty landing/launching pads around its length. Wasp led us to an ancient, shitty-looking, interplanetary jumper that was half-covered in rust. It was the kind of ship that bounty hunters used before they could make the jump to Merc status and it would suit us perfectly. The ship was maybe forty feet, front-to-back, and twenty across. The wings were delta-shaped and swept back from the fuselage. The cockpit was the standard scoop. There were no obvious weapon mounts but I knew Bella, and Wasp, wouldn't let them go off-world without some kind of offensive weaponry.

I entered the cool, dim interior of the ship through the hatch in front of the starboard wing. The inside was straight and narrow as they came. There were four Cryo-tubes in the aft compartment, right in front of the weapon racks, and in the middle compartment were several metallic crates next to the hatch that contained the gear we had brain-stormed for the mission. The cockpit was on a raised section to the front of the ship and that was it for the interior of our ride to Slam.

"Alright," Wasp said, dropping his bag, "Let's get her prepped and get this show on the road."

So three hours later I was bullied into my cryo-chamber with my hands shackled behind my back and my ankles cuffed together too. I had already been injected with the clear liquid that would all too soon knock me out and thank God Wasp had decided against the fucking horse-bit I had seen. I closed my eyes and tried to dispel the panic that was rising up in my throat, my heart rate was rising rapidly with it.

"Put her under now Ioan before she has a bloody cardiac arrest!" Wasp snapped, his voice as raised as it ever got and that perhaps wasn't as much as it sometimes seemed as my eyes shot open and I slammed a booted foot into the glass in front of me in the sudden need I felt to escape.

"Relax Jack." Ioan commanded as he programmed my chamber and I was plunged into artificial sleep.

You aren't supposed to dream in Cryo-sleep. You're not supposed to be aware. I didn't know what was going on around me, I won't claim that I did but I dreamt. I dreamt of terrible things…

Nightmares I guess you could call them. Nightmares where I relived memories but not the good memories. Some of them were from an age that I was so young that I only recognized them because I was told about them by others.

Like the time my Aunt Audrey gave me a hiding so bad that I turned practically black and blue from the chest down and social services took me into custody. Or the time one of the matrons of the home I lived in for a while locked me in the broom cupboard and left me there most of the night, to be fair on her however, she didn't know I was there.

Then there are the memories of a five year old, a memory of sheer chaos, people running and screaming, fire in the background and the sound of gun and blaster fire echoing in your ears. The noise beyond defining.

My parents had died that night. I don't even remember them dieing, I just know they did because my Aunt Audrey told me about how she had found me. Crying and covered in soot, my parents nowhere to be seen.

Then there are the other memories, more recent memories. The orphanages, with their strict matrons. The foster homes – only the bad ones, it seemed, try as I might I couldn't find the memories of Tracy and Tom, the only decent foster parents I had ever had.

Then suddenly as it started, it all ended. It all ended with a deep breath and eye eyes shooting wide open. I was awake again, which could only mean one thing, my mind devised, I was about to arrive at Butcher Bay.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Butcher Bay

Slam's a bitch.

There's no two ways about it. It's a fact, a hard one to live up to sometimes but it's a fact nonetheless. A fact that nobody tries to hide from you. I knew what I was getting myself into, at least, I did in theory. In theory I had it all figured out, I knew exactly what I was doing and how my plan was going to work itself out.

I had ideas, big ones! They were nothing but fucking dreams. A plan on the outside is nothing when you get on the inside. Survival isn't a game you might_want_to try your hand at playing anymore. It's _The Law_. It's the only law.

That law strikes home the minute that you're paraded in front of the Warden and her senior guards. Unloaded from whatever shitty little under-cutter that you've been transported on, chains around your wrists and ankles. If you've ever seen cattle being unloaded at a meat market then you'll know exactly what it's like when a grumpy Bounty Hunter's crew docks at a slam like Butcher Bay and heads in for a pay day.

Fucking wasters!

I've done a lot of things in my life. I've been a lot of things and not all of them things that I would be at all proud of. I had done things as a runaway before getting on that doomed ship. I had done things with and for Riddick that I wouldn't wish on any other teenager. I'd felt like property before but not in the same way that I felt like property standing next to Ioan in front of that Warden.

When Riddick treated me like property I felt safe. I belonged. Not only did I belong at those moments but I knew during those times that I belonged to him. Belonging to Riddick was safe. It was a completely different thing to be standing there in chains as you're poked, prodded and bartered for.

Being property felt like shit right about then.

I've been a lot of things in my time, a lot of things but I'd never been made to feel quite like that. It appeared that our cover story was simple. We were there for punishment. Bella's idea of keeping those valuable to her loyal through fear of what might come if we were to step out of line further. Only the Warden was all for keeping us here long term, got her more money that way. I guess she had to think of the long term investment in prisoners.

Rachael O'Hare was middle aged and aging gracefully but there was something about her that was still beautiful in a way that I couldn't quite explain. Her smile, which she had offered Wasp when he had been shown in with us had been offered without hesitation and was genuine enough. Her shoulder length brown hair was peppered with gray and tied back into a loose ponytail. The wrinkles around the corners of her mouth and eyes were defiantly smile lines but there was the hint of a storm that could be raised from her and would be unpleasant to encounter.

That and it was obvious that not only was she sly but shrewd too. She was certainly an interesting woman. If Bella had sent anyone else to deal with our incarceration then I'm sure that Ioan and I would have been staying as long-term residents. It was clear that Rachael O'Hare was used to getting what she wanted. And right at that moment, she wanted us.

"Seven fifty for the lot." She slammed her hand down on the tabled top palm down.

"You can up your price all you want, they are only going to be staying here as long as Bella wants them to. They're still more valuable to her then UDs. This is just a way for her to keep them undercontrol." Wasp sat cool as can be in front of that woman and lit up, casting an eye over his shoulder at us for just a moment. To anyone else it would have appeared that he had been doing this kind of thing for years. "She's finally taking a leaf out of her old man's book. Learned that true control comes from fear."

"Eight hundred. Final offer. You won't get better."

"No deal." Wasp shook his head and pulled an envelope from inside his jacket pocket. "You made a deal with my boss and I'm here to make sure that the terms are met. Two fifty and they leave when she says that their time is up."

"I can't persuade you to leave here with your pockets full instead?"

"Would be a far more pleasant state of affairs for me but no. You know as well as I do that it's not a good idea to cross a Greendale." Wasp shrugged as he took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it into the corner next to us. "I hope that the bunks here are comfortable."

"I think you'll find that you rest well enough."

And that was the end of the talking. We had been pushed around and treated like animals for nearly three hours for it to end in Wasp talking about his bed. Fucking typical.

Buzzers sounded all over the many-tiered triple max part of the prison as a bunch of barely uniformed guards walked in to escort Ioan and I out of the room, leaving Wasp to talk to that woman. I studied the guards gear as closely as I could. I knew the info would be invaluable later. Intel always was.

All of the guards were wearing heavy, tactical body armor but without helmets for a macho bullshit reason most likely. The tac-gear was an iridescent green color. Rigid plates protected the torso, arms, and legs, while flexible material allowed free movement in the joints. The body armor _would_ have been uniform except for the grotesque, risqué, and down-right dumb-fuck graffiti the individual guards had adorned their armor with. One even had a replica of a skull attached to a shoulder-plate. At least I hoped it was a replica.

Their weapons weren't a joke either. They were all carrying badass, paramilitary assault rifles. Stripped down versions of the Lockheed-Pong Light Infantry Energy Rifle. The energy bolts they fired could be set to stun or 'fry every fucking nerve in your body'. The stripped versions had shit targeting systems because of the removal of the enhanced targeting computer. Each of them carried a wide-range of sidearms that were all soft-round projectiles which would prove highly lethal to unarmored prisoners.

_These motherfuckers aren't playing around._

It sounded like they had put the prison into lock down just for us. At least that meant that I had time to prepare for whatever attention the inmates would feel free to lavish on me once I was inside. It just meant that I wouldn't have a mob to deal with right away. There were definite pros and cons to that.

The thought was enough to make me start to sweat as I was pushed along none to gently by the butt of a rifle. The first jab was nothing but it didn't take long for a second to follow and third which managed to make pain blossom between my shoulder blades and made me stumble into Ioan's back.

He looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes sullen as he looked between me and the guards. Ioan grunted and quickly let me move past him placing himself between the guards behind us and me. It was probably only at that moment that I finally realized that the prisoners weremost likelygoing to be the least of my worries.

Riddick had never said much about the guards on the rare occasions that he'd actually discuss slam with me. He preferred to talk about convicts, mercs and wardens. Who ran which slam. Which slams certain mercs preferred. Which wardens ran a slack ship. Which were the easiest to escape from and which were the hardest. And he didn't often volunteer much of the information that he gave, I had always had to catch him in the right mood and be prepared to live with an extra grouchy Riddick for a number of days afterward.

As a teenager I had taken in everything that he had, had to say. I had been careful not to ask for more information then he had been willing to give or ask unnecessary questions. I was too smart for that. I learned very quickly never to push Riddick. It was dangerous, even for me.

He had rarely spoken of encountering women in double or triple max slams. He'd spoken of perhaps two women and he had never told me much about their treatment. He only ever told me what he thought would be necessary for me to know incase I ever got caught with him. Son of a bitch probably thought that he was protecting my _'sensitive little mind'_ by leaving out the gory details.

It sure wasn't taking much for me to imagine them now. To fill in the blanks in Riddick's stories where I hadn't realised that there had been blanks in the first place. At that moment I could have screamed. If I'd not been shackled andsurrounded by six heavily armed fuck-wits, I'd probably have struck out. But there was no room for fits of temper now. That would have to wait until I found Riddick.

I hadn't even been introduced to the main population yet and my plans were already being fucked with .At least now I understood why Bella had insisted on sending Ioan in with me and had sent Wasp to deal with the aftermath. It appeared that I was going to need all the back up that I could get.

This shit was going to get messier then I had anticipated.

Not only was I going to have to search a hostile prison population of nearly four hundred for one man but I wasn't onlygoing to have to watch our for convicts that were out for a good fuck but guards that wouldn't think twice about going for the exact same thing. Here I wasn't one of the Big Bads, I was just an unarmed female that nobody cared about.

I looked over my shoulder at Ioan and inwardly cringed. What had I dragged him into?

The hallway that we were being moved along was bright, almost too bright and long. The lights overhead would have felt like murder to anyone with an eye shine. Maybe that was half the point; no way would someone like Riddick wouldeven attempt to get out through the main corridors if someone like me with normal sight was getting a headache.

That would have been a suicide mission anyway.

There was more then one way out of a triple max slam. The original blue prints showed as much and I was going to do my best to make sure that I utilized those original blue prints. And unlike anyone else, I had a free pass out of there if things went wrong or right.

"Keep moving!" The voice behind me was low, threatening and somewhat guttural.

I turned and looked only to find that another group of guards had joined the original and separated Ioan and I. One had a rifle pointed at his head and like the headstrong fool he often was, he was actually trying to stare down one of the guards.

"Leave it." I said softly but with authority. He opened his mouth to argue. "We're in no position to argue with them so cool it. I'll find you when I get in there."

"After they've…" He started and then was pushed roughly in the direction that we'd come from.

"Enough chat. Get moving." I caught the butt of the rifle before it connected with my ribs again. They were sore enough without being volunteered for target practice.

"All you have to do to make me move is ask nicely." I snarled at them releasing my grip as I did so. They didn't bother saying anything more to me and I didn't bother wasting breath trying to make conversation.

Suddenly I couldn't wait to be put into my cell and use what was left of the hours of the lockdown to prepare. A lone prisoner I was sure I would be able to handle, then I had to work out how to survive against more then one until I found Ioan or Riddick or both of them.

Or maybe when I found Riddick that would just be the start of my problems.

Who knew?

I caught the butt of that damn rifle again and pushed it out of my way. Just because I was shackled and they were armed and armored, it didn't mean that I was going to be a pushover. I turned and glared at the guard behind me, taking in his heavily armored body and the shiv scar across his face.

"If I wanted you to fucking touch me I would have given you a written invitation." I snapped at him. "I don't see a pen or paper aroundso keep your hands and your weapons to yourself."

"Not exactly in a position to be giving orders are you little girl." The guard reached out and grabbed my chains and pulled me close enough that I could feel the warmth of his rank breath on my face. He was disgusting!

"I'm not giving orders. I'm just giving some friendly advice." I smirked at him. "And you would be good to take my advice."

"If you're not giving orders you're taking them. Got it girly?" He jerked me closer to him. He was giving a new meaning to the whole idea of yanking my chain and I growled somewhat ferally at him. Then like the somewhat impulsive creature that I am, I moved before I thought of the consequences, slamming the heel of my somewhat modified boots into the top of his foot, scrapping it down the side of his arch as I snatched my shackles back and wrapped a loop of the chain around his neck.

"Don't call me girly because I'm like no _'girly'_ you've ever met. And I told you that if I wanted to be touched I would have give out an invitation." I snarled into his ear as a sharp pain exploded through my head and my knees buckled as dark spots started to float before my eyes.

'_Smart Jack, real smart.'_ I couldn't help but think as all the spots joined into one black void before my eyes and I surrendered myself to my fate.

When I came round I wasn't in a sanitary hallway anymore, I was inside the communal area of Butcher Bay, thrown over the shoulder of one of the guards as they carried me along. We walked past cells filled with convicts. Some of the doors were shut tight and some appeared to still be open and yet as far as I could tell through the splitting pain ripping through my skull, they were making no moves to leave the confined spaces of their cells.

Then they stopped outside an empty cell and kicked open the shut door. "Empty." One of the guards scoffed.

"Like you're surprised. No one ever seems to be able to catch him out during lockdown. He treats it like a walk in the park." Scar-face shook his head.

"You'd know all about that." Afro-guard dumped me on one of the two cots that were attached to both sides of the room, leaving a five-foot gap in between them.

"Watch yourself!" Scar-face growled back as he leveled his rifle in my face, finger on the trigger as Goldilocks, the guard to declare the cell empty, dug around in his pocket.

"So you've come round." Goldilocks said to me as he unlocked the cuffs around my boots and tossed them over one shoulder.

"You'll find I'm rather hardy. It'll take more then a knock to the head to keep me down." I snarled at him.

"You have a whole lot of attitude for a lone little girl in a whole lot of trouble." He leaned over me as he unlocked the chains around my wrists and then stood up again.

"Time for some fun?" Scar-face looked at Goldilocks eagerly as he took a step closer to me and I glared up at him.

"No." Goldilocks shook his head. It seemed that he had enough seniority to stop the company that he was currently with."We'll leave her for Big Bad when he decides to come back. Leave her time to sweat it out because he certainly won't be as kind as we would have been."

"Lets go." Scar-face looked somewhat disgusted with Goldilocks but didn't make a complaint out load.

"Just remember little girl. Until lockdown is over I wouldn't think about leaving this cell. It's the only time that we're allowed to kill prisoners on sight. Just a friendly warning." Afro-guard shook his head.

"Like I said. Leave her for the Big Bad." Goldilocks smirked at me and the three of them retreated from my cell.

* * *

Oh the struggles and misadventures behind this update...well I won't get into those but it was an interesting road that lead us thus far.Okay so maybe I've just been watching too many weird movies and living on 3 hours sleep in the last 48 hours but finally I'm happy and we've gotten to Butcher Bay.

If you feel up to it do review, poor little sleep deprived me would highly appreciated it.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Riddick

Right away things were different then I had thought that they would be, than Riddick had led me to believe that they would be. You want me to start at the beginning? Oh, yeah, the guards were thugs. Big mother-fuckers with more brawn then they knew what to do with and weapons that they would never be able to use to their full potential but deep down they were gutless; not the monsters that I expected to meet. They hid behind their paramilitary weapons. Without those weapons they would be nothing! Nothing more then fear filled ex-bounty hunter types that hid behind their weapons and their cocks.

And fucking hell I hated myself because I understood them. It was easy to get lost behind the power of a weapon, to glory in the destruction that its power achieved and the instant respect they could garner. In that way I was probably no better then they were but then I always figured that it was a very thin line between the law enforcer and the convict.

You want me to continue with the bullshit that Riddick planted? Butcher Bay, a no daylight slam, somewhere where you couldn't see your hand an inch in front of your face? Bullshit! I could see clear across the divide that separated the cells on my side of the block to the ones on the other.

What else had he lied about? Had he lied? Had things just changed?

I guess he had never figured on it mattering if what he told me was real or not. I was never supposed to end up in a Slam with him. As he proved himself, he was ready to get thrown back into Slam rather then lead anyone on a chase that might take me down with him.

Being angry with him changed nothing. By my own choice, I was sitting in a cell in the middle of a triple-max slam and here I was going to stay for at least a week or whenever Wasp decided it was time to pull the plug on this little mission of mine.

I sighed then took a deep breath. I had walked voluntarily into whatever shit I was in and I was fully capable of dealing with the consequences. It was time I forgot about being angry and got on with the job at hand. Put my mind back into the game that I was going to have to start playing if I wanted to survive. And survival wasn't a joke.

I had two Wangs in pieces and who knew how much time to put them together. All I knew was that I needed at least one before Goldilocks' Big Bad made his way back to his cell. Bastard!

If the guards figured he was enough of an arse to do as punishment for my attempted assassination of Scarface, I was going to have to hope that he recognised a Wang and chose to leave me alone because of it. If not then I would have to hope the human race wouldn't miss one lone convict. I wasn't about to hesitate in killing him, not if he threatened my life.

So I set to work quickly, tearing open the hidden pocket in the lining of my jacket and finally opening the compartment in the sole of my modified boots. I would have to make sure I thanked Colin later for the modifications. They were definitely going to come in handy and he not only built the hidden compartments but the other modifications that I had requested.

Whatever Wasp and Ioan thought of him, the worm was worth having around.

Ioan!

I clenched my jaw as I quickly set about sorting out the pieces of my weapons and started their assembly. Where had they taken Ioan and what had they done to him? I hoped he'd actually use the sense that I knew he had stored in him somewhere and had done as he was told instead of acting like a prick like I had.

It had never been a secret that I didn't always know what was best for me. And all I had to show from my latest bout of stupidity was a splitting headache and a roommate that could appear or disappear at will and was bastard enough that the guards didn't bother with him too much.

Big Bad.

Everything screamed to me that it was Riddick. Everything! Maybe I would strike it lucky for the first time since my encounter with the guards. Maybe, just maybe they had put me right where I wanted to be. Knowing myself and my luck however, I knew that it was about as likely as being handed an aspirin.

It took me a little over half an hour to get the first Wang completed but it was still powering up and going through system checks when the before mentioned 'Big Bad' walked in.

He wasn't so much big as built like a brick shithouse with a beer belly. He was probably only about 5'10'', maybe 5'11'', at a rather large push. Maybe it was because of his girth, maybe it was just the position I was in at the time but he appeared to me to be the most physically intimidating man that I had ever encountered.

He looked at me.

I looked right back, my lips curling into a silent snarl. He didn't have much hair but what he did have was a light brown and his skin was pale, a little too pale. The muscles on his arms were criss-crossed with pink scar tissue. Even his face looked pretty fucked-up to me. I guess I shouldn't have been judging, the last time I had gotten a look at myself it had been an uninspiring sight to say the least.

"My, my, my... I heard they brought me meat, but they didn' tell me it was small, helpless, and had a pussy." He said, his voice grinding out in a rasp like he wasn't used to using it, not to mention that it was a fraction higher then I thought it should be. There was also a hint of some weird, singsong accent that was almost enough to leave me with the urge to laugh.

"Small, I'm not as small as some. Female, I most defiantly am. As for helpless, you don't know me at all." I shrugged tucking the nearly ready Wang in my belt behind me before the slow moving brown eyes clocked onto it. He seemed mildly shocked that I had even spoken back to him instead of running to a corner and cowering in it just at the sight of him.

"Just about _everyone's_ helpless when they cozy up to me, darlin'." He crossed his bulky arms, his muscles flexing in a somewhat menacing way, as if he was imagining wrapping them around my neck and squeezing until my neck snapped. I was no fool, if it came down to a contest of sheer strength he had me more then beat. If it came down to that then I would just have to rely on my speed and the razor-sharp edge of Riddick's shiv which Wasp had given my on the sly.

"You're not particularly smart are you?" I unfolded my legs and placed both feet firmly on the floor. Soon I would be on my feet, I had always been taught that you defended yourself better on your feet then not but I didn't want to look like I was anything but relaxed.

I had one plan and one only that I had thought through completely. The plan – to keep him talking long enough for the Wang's targeting computers and basic systems to boot and the charge in the power cell to be engaged in a useful way. I knew well enough that plans didn't always work but I had to hope on this one, there was too much of a chance that he would get the upper hand in a fistfight.

"I on the other hand." I started talking again when I got no reply from the buffoon. "Am not particularly stupid. And it's my brains that keep me from being helpless you'll find. That and the people that I know just about everywhere."

"Whoever you think you know… they don't mean shit down here in the dark." He chuckled. I guess my bold statements did sound kind of funny coming from a girl stuck in a triple-max cell with a rather large and imposing man in front of her.

"If the rumours are true then one of them just might. One that has a very particular interest in my survival and state of being." I stood as he took a step closer to me, my hand reaching round behind my back and grasping the handle of my shiv.

"Who?"

"Does the name Richard B. Riddick mean anything to you?" I watched him hesitate for a moment but he didn't move any closer to me. I had to keep him talking, keep him distracted and keep distance between us. Throwing in Riddick's name seemed to have helped somewhat.

"Why the fuck would Riddick want ta do anythin' but cor' your ass out?" He gave me a sceptical look.

"I've often asked myself that very same question. Why me? But I've never really been able to come up with a satisfactory answer and he never gave me one. All I know is whenever it came to moving on; I got dragged along for the ride." I smirked at him. "I was at the very least useful to him in someway or another."

"Oh, I think I know what way. The same way your goin' to be useful to me, meat. On your knees, your back… whatever fuckin' way I want'cha'." He was obviously over his initial shock.

"I'm sure that would not be a smart move on your part." I grinned as I heard the light bleep that my weapon made when it had finally powered up sufficiently enough to be used. At least I hadn't made a mistake putting it together. If I had things may have ended up a hell of a lot more messy and I was in no mood to clean up a mess.

"Enough talk, meat." He started forward, this time with purpose. My hand released my shiv and gripped the Wang bringing it up in time for the mouth of the weapon to meet his forehead dead centre.

There it was, that little surge of confidence, the realisation of the power that I held and that I was as close to an expert as I could be in the use of that power. I grinned at him as he stopped dead in his tracks, nearly over balancing so his skin pressed tight against the weapon and his eyes slipped over me with a new appraising glint to them.

"Didn't they tell you how I liked to kill? A shot right between the eyes and you've walked right into it." I said softly cocking my head slightly. The predator in me loved having control. "You see, I meant what I said when I said I wasn't helpless. Do you think that Riddick would ever train anyone and then leave them completely helpless?" I said calmly and took a step forward and he took a step back. "How long has it been since you lived in the real world?"

"Ten years." The reply was a growl; he obviously didn't like the tables being turned on him by the female that he thought he was going to be able to get a good fuck out of.

"So you won't recognise this baby then. It's called a Wang-Liu. Lovely piece of technology really but it's often over locked by professionals because of it's associations with the hard-nuts and mercs. But don't doubt that one squeeze _will_ decorate the walls with whatever you've got in that pretty little head of yours." I gave him a thoughtful look. "To tell you the truth I don't want to kill you, I have no reason to want to kill you, yet. But you mean nothing to me and I will not hesitate to kill you if you cause me trouble, I've killed people who deserved it a whole lot less then you do, so don't doubt me."

"I think you're fulla shit." The crazy fuck actually grinned at me. "No fuckin' way you snuck a gat' in here past the guards. I eat little models like that for breakfast."

I slipped the shiv from its resting place and laid the cutting edge against his throat with lightning-quick movements. His eyes widened as the edge bit just deep enough to cause blood to well around the metal.

"But _this_," I grinned back at him, "Is very real." I brought the Wang close. "Flare. Low."

I pointed my Wang at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. A low-light flare, blue-green in color, burst from the aperture beneath the main barrel. I could practically smell the fear burst from the man's pores along with the sweat.

"Nine-milly," the Wang beeped and I returned it to its former resting place. "You want breakfast now."

He growled, with much more bass than I would have given him credit for, "What do I gotta do?"

"Two things." I replied.

Lock down finished an hour later, or as close to an hour as I could figure. From that moment on the game was under way. My scarred and prison tattooed cellmate and I headed out quickly. First on my agenda was to find Ioan and the idiot with me said he had passed the cell that he had been put in.

He hadn't been wrong. He knew where Ioan was but where Ioan was, a large crowd had gathered. The motherfucker was in the middle of a raging fight, not with a cellmate but with one of the burly looking prison guards. They were fighting in the middle of one of the round recreation areas that were scattered randomly throughout the tiers of cells. It was a fight that was being watched with amusement by a handful of armed guards and more prisoners then I cared to be around.

"Fuck, fuck and fuck again." I muttered under my breath as Ioan over powered the guard by sheer skill and four of his friends descended upon him with shock sticks.

I can't begin to describe the kind of control it took for me to stand and watch the guards beat into him and finally, when he was still fully conscious but barely able to move, hoisted between two men and dragged away. I knew that to survive myself I couldn't draw attention, not from the guards or from the other prisoners that were too intent on the goings on at the time to worry about a lone woman in their midst. So much for him being there to help me and watch my back.

I moved around the crowd a little ways, long enough for me to catch my friend's eye as the crowd moved out of the guard's way and then folded back in on itself. The inmates quickly dispersed. How I managed to live through that first dispersal I don't know. A lot of it I figure was down to sheer luck and quick moving on my part.

One or two certainly saw me but I was gone before they were able to get a real good look or work out where I was headed. A few more became blocks between me and those who had noticed me, thinking me, from what I could tell, one of the younger, slighter young men who were probably as likely to become prison bitches as I was. I was certainly black and blue enough to disguise my feminine facial features if not the curves.

I thought that I had gotten away clean. I had lost my scarred cell companion in the mix-up, not that that mattered all that much to me, I figured that I could always find him if I needed him again, but I also found that I was very much out in the open. I had two things however in my favor or so I thought.

One, I was fast and agile. Two the light, although not the pitch black that I thought I would be faced with, was dim enough that shadows were cast everywhere. There was enough hanging debris on the walkway to create shadows for me to hide and move though. Unfortunately those shadows would only help me so much, they would never hold up to proper scrutiny.

But like I said, these were only the things that I thought.

A man grabbed my bad arm from behind, twisting it sharply behind my back and I felt the cold sharp steel of a shiv press into my back hard enough to make a superficial break in my skin and for me to feel the warmth of blood start trickling down my back. I stiffened and tried to stop only to be shoved forward again, the man behind me setting a pace that if I tried to stop I would fall back on his blade and not only be paralyzed but also be killed. There was no way that I would be able to reach my Wang and survive the maneuver so I kept moving, hoping that when he got me where ever he wanted me I would be released long enough to bring my gun into play.

We passed quite a few inmates, right past them and although they leered at me, on further inspection of the man behind me they just let us pass on by unbothered. Curiosity killed the cat in my case. I tried to turn my head to see who was behind me and was only given a rough shove and a deeper nick in my back for my trouble.

When I tried to go right instead of left at a small junction, all I got for my trouble was a cruel twist on my arm, enough for me to feel the joint start to protest and move into a somewhat unnatural position, not that it took much force to dislocate my left shoulder anymore. If he used much more force he was easily going to dislocate my arm at the shoulder, if he twisted much more, probably at the elbow too.

I was terrified!

After what felt like hours (only five minutes at the most of course) I was shoved into a cell and unfortunately for me, I was not released. Instead I was walked right to the back wall and pressed a little roughly against it.

"Well, well, well." His voice growled into my head as he twisted my arm a little tighter behind me and I whimpered against the wall that my body was being ground into. "Not as smart as I thought you were." His voice stayed low but I knew it. I knew it very well.

Riddick!

He used one of his feet to kick my feet apart so that I was standing spread eagle. "Get the fuck off of me." I ground out but I was only pressed harder against the wall and my arm was twisted sharply. I felt the pop that my shoulder made when it was dislocated and I gritted my teeth against the pain, keeping my moan as soft as I could. I was not going to scream or cry out. I would not prove to him that I was weak. Instead I let my eyes flutter shut as I tried to pull myself away from the brink of unconsciousness. At least when a joint dislocated as easy as my shoulder did, it became just as easy to relocate.

"Not going to happen. I want to know why you're here." He hissed in my ear.

"And you think I'm going to tell you while I'm pressed up against this wall? You don't fucking know me anymore." I said resisting the sudden urge that I had to cry like a baby. "You know I'm not going to tell you. If you seriously thought that I would then I'd have to say you're a whole lot fucking stupider then I thought you were." I snapped at him.

"What if I said I'd kill you if you didn't tell me?" He answered the hint of a threat real in his voice and I shuddered.

"If I didn't know you better, I'd call you for bullshitting." I answered, whimpering again as the position I was in ground my dislocated joint into the stone of the wall. "It's a shame that you aren't the person that I thought you were. I never stopped defending you. Never said one fucking bad word against you even though people kept telling me that it was alright to tell them how it really was. They wouldn't believe me when I tried. I'd rather be killed by you then go back and have to eat all those words Riddick." I hissed out his name for the first time.

"You always did idolize me a little much."

"Fuck you." I replied. "Fuck you!"

"Tell me!" He roared in my ear and I hated myself for the fearful sweat that broke out all over my body.

"Over my dead body!" I yelled back.

"God damn it Jack you were always too stubborn for your own good." He stepped back, releasing me and putting distance between us. I didn't think. I reacted. I turned to face him, my good arm whipped out my Wang and I trained it on him, my lips curled back from gritted teeth in a vicious snarl. I didn't care that it was Riddick in front of me; he had gone from the man that I had come to save to one that I actually wanted to kill.

The realization shocked me for a moment, for a split second I actually wanted to kill him. He realized it to, I think as he looked at me, I mean really at me, his silver orbs penetrating my very soul and he saw my intent. He saw my anger and fear and recognized that I actually wanted to kill him in that fleeting point in time.

"What you gonna do Jack? Pull the trigger?" He looked at me scornfully and I felt shock settle into my bones. "I dare you. Pull the trigger."

Riddick moved toward me as I started to feel light headed, the pain in my shoulder was beginning to get to the point of unbearable. I had to act now if I was ever going to act, I knew that and yet I felt so very dizzy. He kept moving toward me, perhaps a step quicker, I couldn't be sure, all I knew was that I was swaying slightly and I suddenly couldn't stop my eyes from rolling into the back of my head.

"Didn't think you could," was the last thing I heard him say as I pitched forward the darkness taking over but not before I was scooped into his arms and the scent that I had always associated with him engulfed me.


	11. Chapter 10

Alright so this one was a long time coming and for that all I can do is say sorry… I had come major problems with this one but with a lot of help (thanks Thugs-4-Less) I did finally get it done and here it is.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, please keep them coming, I like to know whatchya'll are thinking. :)

Kayla.

Chapter 10: 'My Way Or The Highway'

Coming to after passing out is never a pleasant experience. Coming to after having passed out in Butcher Bay comes with its own unique set of horrors. The questions: am I alive, can I move, in what way have I been taken advantage of or abused, am I surrounded by a gaggle of thick headed assholes here for multiple murders and rape, all spring to mind in quick order and send your heart racing toward tachycardia.

I had to resist the urge to sit bolt upright, attempt to pull my feet under me and move as quickly from where I was as was humanly or otherwise possible. Yet something more then that primal instinct that told me to flee kept me still on that hard, somewhat lumpy prison mat.

My panic left me with a heartbeat so loud I was sure that it could be heard clean in another planetary system but my head was finally clear enough to allow myself time to try and answer some of my own panic questions. I slowed my breathing and listened closely to what was around me and from what I could gather there wasn't much.

There were voices off in the distance, to me they sounded like murmurs, hardly there and therefore far away. Until I actually sat up and had a look around, I couldn't know for sure but I couldn't help but feel a little more secure. The only other real sound nearby was of falling water, not much, probably just a trickle but it was there.

As for my own bodily condition, that was easy enough to feel out. I hadn't been hardly touched since I passed out. There was a dull, throbbing pain that was steadily growing in my left shoulder. The kind of pain that makes you feel more than a little groggy and I had the sudden urge like I wanted to be sick.

_You fucking stupid little girl!_ I half screamed at myself mentally as I lay there trying to figure out what my next course of action was going to be. I was missing my weapons, I was more then likely going to move somewhat sluggishly because of the pain in my shoulder and although my shoulder had been relocated I was not going to have the full range of motion that I would need.

I was completely and totally fucked! Ioan was god knows where, Riddick had been pissed enough to try and take a chunk out of me and I had gotten myself totally fucked up. Between the guards and an angry Riddick I was in no condition to move anywhere on my own without becoming a victim.

_Shit!_ There was nothing for it, I had to take stock, lay low for as long as I could and then try and make contact with Wasp and Ioan.

_Come on girl, think!_ I hounded myself as I let my right hand travel up to my shoulder, gently probing at the flesh around it. It was tender but as far as I could tell there had been no great damage.

With my hand still pressed to my shoulder I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the cot, my boots touching the ground with a low hollow sound that made me look quickly to my left and right, I was getting sloppy. But I came face to face with Riddick.

He was sitting in an old beat up chair, arms crossed across his broad chest, his face totally impassive. He sat there, all calm and sedate, looking right back at me like it was nothing. He hadn't changed much, maybe only a line of age here or there, across his forehead or at the corner of his mouth or eye. Otherwise the same solid lines were there, unchanged.

It was Riddick's way to be unchanging. Even the standard black pants and sturdy boots of the prison uniform didn't look out of place, especially when you noted the fact that the sleeves had been ripped from his t-shirt to make a custom wifebeater, the sleeves probably hadn't fit his arms properly in the first place.

I couldn't help but wonder what I looked like to him in that moment, had I changed at all? Who really cared anyway, all he would see was the weakness in me. The pale sheen I knew I got when I was in pain always made me look weak, the defensive way I was sitting, my right hand still pressed against my aching joint.

"What's the plan, Jack?" His voice filled the room even though he barely spoke above normal level, but that was Riddick. For as long as I was around him, he had had a voice that penetrated no matter what level he spoke at.

"Now you want to know if there's a plan?" I gave him a level look as my tone sounding even a little sullen to me. Hell, here I was being offered the chance to have a conversation with him and I was too pissed off and tired to be anything but juvenile.

Riddick stood up so I had to look up at him as he moved across the room. He had that same predatory grace that I remembered, the kind of grace you saw in wild animals and he just kept moving until he was right in front of me.

"Yes."

Fucking trust him to be simple about everything.

"The plan is to get _you_ the fuck out of _here_." I couldn't keep the smirk that clearly said, 'what else were you thinking?' off of my face. Sometimes I couldn't help being a smartass.

"No shit, Jack. But if that's all you got then I'm better off on my own." His was a low growl, like he didn't like me talking back. I wasn't for letting everything spill yet, hell, after the turn that our reunion had taken, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to get him out anymore.

"You always said you were anyway." I said in practically a whisper as I drew in a deep breath and looked away from him. That's when the bitch in me decided that there was no point in going back to being the teenager that he knew from before. I wasn't that person anymore. I clenched my teeth for a moment as I looked back at him. "This time you're going to need me and the transport that I've arranged with my employer to have waiting for us."

"Your boss?" He leaned right in close to me, his nose less then an inch from mine, his silver eyes boring holes right through me. "And the pilot is her's too?" I could hear the mocking tone to his voice and it made me bristle. I was no longer used to being mocked and I didn't like it.

"My boss. Her pilot. You don't want the help. Fine. You're not going to get a better opportunity then this." I leveled with him and shrugged. Either way I was out of here, he had the choice of coming with me or not and yet part of me wanted him to come with me so very badly, regardless of what had happened.

"Your boss, her pilot. Who can take us any fucking where _they_ want!" Riddick's voice took on a harsh coldness that I didn't relish hearing. "What's the rule Jack? Always have an out, remember?" He moved in closer to me, before I could move I felt his breath on my neck. "You smell like the world." He paused and leaned a little closer, this time, taking a piece of my hair and lifting it, playing it through his fingers for just a moment, "Soft, weak meat for the taking, Jack. What makes you think I need meat's help to get out of this shit-hole?"

I couldn't help but be repulsed by him. For that moment, he reminded me of that scarred up jackass that I'd lost in the crowd. When had I made Riddick better then the likes of that man? Had I forgotten how cruel he really could be?

I went ridged and mustered up the coldest and most disgusted look I could find as I looked at his face. He was crowding me and enjoying the fact that he had got to me.

"I'm sick and fucking _tired_ of being called meat. Fucking goddamned meat." I used the flicker of anger to control my body's urge to tremble slightly. I couldn't believe I had forgotten about his intimidation tactics. The games he used to play with the people that pissed him off. I had watched him so closely, at first I'd tired to emulate him and now I was letting him play those stupid games with me. God damn it, I knew better! "If you didn't need me you'd already be out of this shit-hole." It was my turn to growl at him.

"Temper, temper Jack." He stood up straight again with a fluidity and grace that came naturally to him. Then he backed off, not like in retreat, more because it suited him to do so. He never did anything that it didn't suit him to do. "You read my letter, I've got somethin' cookin'."

I leaned toward him even as he moved back; trying to hide the momentary wince that I was sure he'd seen anyway as my shoulder protested to the movement.

"Then what's the plan?" I couldn't help myself, he had challenged me, I suddenly wasn't afraid to challenge him right back. "It must be good; you've been cookin' it for years." I cocked my head slightly, feeling my own confidence come back the minute he was out of my breathing space.

He fucking turned his back on me. Turned right around so that he wasn't facing me anymore and started making his way back to the chair he'd been sitting on when I first noticed him.

"It'll be lights out soon, Jack. Maybe you should get some sleep."

That got my hackles raised. I hadn't been treated like a child for years and I was no-longer accustomed to taking orders from anyone when it came to my personal life. The last time I had, it had been because it was a question of Anna's welfare.

"What? That's it? That's the great plan you've been cookin' for five years? 'Get some sleep' is your way to get your ass out of Slam?" I couldn't help but keep the utter disbelieve off my face, fucking bastard wouldn't tell me his plan and I couldn't help but wonder if he even had one. "If I needed someone to tell me what to get some sleep I would not have come to Butcher Bay to get the advice. I would have gone for a holiday on New Mecca; Imam was always good at telling me what to do." I snapped.

He strode across the room so quickly I almost didn't have time to prepare myself, to stop myself from moving away from him on instinct and it was only by the grace of some other power that I managed not to flinch. "Obviously you do need the advice. You're slow, weak and so tired it's makin' you stupid. Maybe I'll tell you in the fucking morning. Now sleep before I make you sleep."

"You already did that or can't you remember? Shall I refresh your memory?" I glared at him, I was so angry it made my chest feel tight. "As I remember it, there was a shiv, a fucking wall and all I got out of the deal was a dislocated shoulder and a death threat."

If his plan was to have a very angry Jack on his hands then he was going about it the right way. I was pissed and not because he was treating me like some kid that needed to be told what to do. No, I was pissed because he was right.

I was exhausted. I was in pain. I was weak in comparison to him, in his world. And maybe I was a little bit stupid. After all, hadn't I willingly incarcerated myself in a fucking triple-max Slam? Perhaps it was the way I had always been, but I hated being wrong, Wasp had pointed it out to me on a hundred occasions, always said it made me hard to teach.

"No threats this time." His voice was level, totally neutral. His whole tone told me that I could argue with him as much as I wanted but he wasn't going to be goaded into a fight with me. "Not my fault you fucked your shit up. You need sleep if you're gonna be worth a shit. So you're going to sleep. Easy or hard, Jack. You know the score."

"You don't know what I'm worth." I snapped but the aggression was gone from my tone if not my posture. He gave me a level look that said it all. He didn't need a come back for me to know exactly what he was thinking. "But it always was your way or the highway." I couldn't keep the irony from my voice, part of me wanted to laugh at it all. "I should have seen that one comin'."

"You should have." He moved away from me again and settled himself on the cot opposite me, stretching and I found it hard to keep the mental image of a big cat out of my head as I watched him. "You're in my world now. Follow my lead and we might get out alive."

"You're taking me with you?" It was a comment made half out of curiosity and half out of challenge. The longer I spent in Butcher Bay, the more I knew that I needed him to come out on the other side alive. Without him I was fucked. He knew it too.

"All depends on you." He said, settling back so his head was resting on the wall behind him. "Sleep."

Sleep doesn't come easy in a place like Butcher Bay. Sleep doesn't come easy when your body protests to the way you lay. Sleep doesn't come easy when all you can think about is the throbbing in your shoulder that makes you wonder if you'd be able to function when it came to a time when you needed to.

This was a little mess that I had not anticipated. Imam had been very wrong. Riddick had obviously gotten wind of me extremely quickly after I had arrived, before I had even had a real change to go looking for him. He had gotten the element of surprise that I had wanted for myself and he had used it to great effect.

But even with the feeling of Riddick's eyes burning into me, and the pain that plagued me, my body soon succumbed to my own exhaustion and I slept. It was the kind of sleep that makes you wonder if that is what it's like when you finally die. Eternal darkness, peace. There were no dreams to disturb my sleep.

It was the noise of purposeful movement that woke me and when I woke it was pitch black. So black that you couldn't possibly have seen your own hand inches in front of your face if you had tried. For a moment I questioned if I had even woken up from my dreamless land of darkness, that was until I heard Riddick's breathing and caught the slight shine of his mercury eyes across the room.

The sounds of other inmates moving around out side of the Riddick's cell had suddenly increased massively. Part of me couldn't help but feel suddenly nervous, I was at a disadvantage in the dark and that made me completely at Riddick's mercy but at least I wasn't half as groggy as I had been before.

"Your weapon is on the floor beside your cot. You might want it, it's time to move." His voice was low, dangerous and without thinking I sat up and fumbled around on the floor for a minute until my fingers closed around the grip of my Wang. Then I got to my feet and waited.

Survival time had come.


	12. Chapter 11

Happy Halloween everyone!!

This month has been hectic as anything for me. I happen to be a lab rat at the moment which is an interesting kind of fun and then getting older…jeeze what next. lol Well I could answer that question only my four nieces and nephews will be here any minute and I won't have the time to do the shout-outs that I want to so I'll get quickly on with that.

K-Marie-M – Thanks for the review and I'm glad you are enjoying what you read. Riddick has been a royal pain in my behind but I've had a lot of help and he's starting to behave himself.

Blondevor – Thank you very much. Hope you continue to enjoy.

Pendragon4 – Always glad to see that you're still reading. And yes, the last part was a little short but the length of this one should hopefully make up for that a little?

Nothingsnobody – glad you love it. Stick with me, there is a lot yet to happen something that are probably expected and others that I don't think even I expected until my muse whispered them in my ear.

Cateyes-120 – Naw not given up yet. ;)

Thug-4-Less - J Don't go crying any rivers yet that day is a long way off I feel…

Enjoy this segment of UA and as always...tell me what you think?

Kayla.

* * *

Chapter 11: Next Time Define Your Expectations

It's strange, don't you think, how everything goes completely silent and still right before a fight or a kill. It's like the air is charging with energy that is just waiting to crackle through your body and the adrenaline starts pumping through your blood. Your heart rate quickens and your breathing deepens, the tips of your fingers tingle and almost unconsciously you shift your weight onto the balls of your feet.

In my life I had been in a fair number of fights, lately it seemed to come with my job. A tingle of respectful fear comes at the beginning of just about any fight where weapons are involved, even in a controlled environment.

This was life or death.

I had fought a lot of people under a lot of totally different circumstances but I had never had to fight in total darkness, at night yes, but at night there's light pollution, starlight, moonlight, in other words enough light to make outline and movement clearly visible. Here I was all but truly blind.

There was a hiss of breath from in front of me that I was more than sure hadn't come from Riddick, not that I currently had any idea where _he_ was, and the sound of a blade against the stone of the wall on the other side of the cell and I froze.

I always found it amazing that no one ever tells you how your blood runs cold when that little trickle of respectful fear travels from the base of your spine up to your brain. All they tell you is that when it comes to it, you'll do what you have to do.

The only warning I was given before I was bowled over was a sudden shuffling of feet. I rolled with the fall, rolling over my shoulder and planting my feet on the stone floor so I was in a crouch but there was no way to avoid the fist to the face I received as I righted myself.

The problem was these motherfuckers could see me a whole lot better than I could see them.

My cheek stung and my jaw ached as I tried to clear my head from the daze that was filling it and making my thoughts cloudy. Fingers closed around my neck as I landed on my back and a knee planted itself firmly in my diaphragm making my breath expel with a 'whoosh'.

Motherfucking _bastard_!

My left hand clawed at those hands as my legs kicked out at air. Panic infused itself into my movements as I tried to choke in oxygen and failed miserably. My ears were buzzing, my own gagging sounds the only thing that I could hear and then it was as if sense hit me in the side of the head.

What the hell was I doing flailing around on the floor, in the dark when I couldn't see my assailants enough to actually combat them? Why the hell was I panicking when I had enough knowledge to not only free myself from the choke hold I was in but to preserve my own life?

In that split second of stillness and clarity I felt the fingers of my right hand tighten around the firm grip of my Wang and my brain finally kicked in, clearing itself of the static that had taken over. My thumb flicked the emergency manual override switch on the side of the grip as I brought it up to my assailant's chest.

The initial blue/green flash as the flare went off was enough to blind even me for a second but unlike the others in the cell I wasn't surprised by the burst of light. My attacker stumbled backwards, flailing gracelessly at the flare sticking out of his chest, before dropping flat on his back. The surprise of it all didn't last long but it was long enough for me to get to my feet as the clothes on the inmate that had been attacking me caught fire and the smell of incinerating flesh filled the cell and providing me with the all light I needed.

To my left, Riddick was grappling with a stocky inmate perhaps three inches shorter than him, his eyes squinting against the light and his normally fluid movements choppy as he tried to shield his photo-sensitive eyes from the mix of the sparking blue/green and the yellowish orange of the flames engulfing the man's clothing.

The other two were more on the lean side with nasty looking scowls on their faces; beyond them I couldn't detect anyone else. I couldn't help but smirk at them as I tucked my Wang into my waistband and moved swiftly forward to meet the first of the two as they raced to meet me.

My knee connected with the first's side as I sidestepped him and his energy carried him on a course that would have made him pass me but I jammed the palm of my hand under his chin, using his own momentum to send him flying backward, his skull making a distinct cracking sound against the floor.

The flash of a blade to my left was all the encouragement that I needed to reach out with both hands to grab the wrist of the bastard trying to shank me. I moved with him and kicked out at his left knee. There was a sickening crunch as my boot made contact and his knee buckled as I twisted his wrist to plunge his own blade into his neck.

I turned in time to watch Riddick's shiv slide noiselessly across the big man's throat. He turned gracefully on the balls of his feet and walked toward me, one hand raised to protect his eyes as he moved past the corpse of the burning man. The scowl on his face was not one that I particularly liked but was easy enough to ignore under the circumstances as I knelt and pulled the crude blade from the last man's neck, wiping the blade clean on his dirty clothing and looked up at him as he stopped in front of me.

"It's time to move. Guards will be all over this place soon," he said.

"I'm following you," I replied, pulling my pant leg up and slipping the blade down the side of my boot before I stood.

All Slams had the same basic structure. They varied from that structure very little from Slam to Slam with some exceptions. Cremitoria was buried under a planet of extreme temperatures and Imbuo Minor was hidden over two kilometers underwater on a planet that had a total land area of maybe a hundred square miles. Otherwise the biggest differences between the various Slams were size and grade.

Most Slams had a planet to themselves; the idea being to keep the worst of that planetary system's criminals away from the main populated planets, to isolate the prisoners and make it difficult for them to escape. It had been a good plan when it was originally hatched but as with all things there were complications.

Complications were a mixed blessing in my case, in one way they made my life harder and in another they made my plan of escape possible.

Butcher Bay was one of only three Slam-planets left in the known systems that was able to incarcerate every criminal out there. What did that mean? That Trizarr Beta had three totally different Slams on it that all went under the same title: Butcher Bay. Triple Max was at the northern most point, single max at the southern most tip with double max to the west and somewhere in-between. To the east was a colony totally populated by guards and their families. Otherwise the nearest populated planet was two days away on a decent transport.

Butcher Bay Triple-Max had been dubbed inescapable back in the days before Riddick had walked through their doors. Now they just said it was damn near impossible. I had a way out that I wouldn't have had if it had not been for the measures that had been put into place not long before my arrival. But I still had six days to stay alive before my plans were set in motion and I could escape back to my real life and a hot shower.

We moved though the pitch-black hallways of that 'inescapable' prison like specters or that's how it felt anyway. I could see very little and I knew that I would be conspicuous to all around us if they had shined eyes or not, it didn't take long for your eyes to adapt to the environment that you were in. My eyes were about as good to me as electric lights on a sunny day.

Riddick had a hand on the small of my back, much the way he had held the shiv to my back when he first removed me from the main population. Gentle pressure to the left and right signaling where I was to go. Even though I was a little battered and bruised I had already proved that I hadn't lost my agility or the ability to do what needed to be done.

The only reason we were moving with as much ease as we were was down to Riddick. There was still a small arrogant and defiant part of myself that kept telling me that I could make it on my own, that I didn't need him but I knew it was lying to me. Regardless of who I was on the outside and what I could do in the real world or even the confines of a cell, I needed Riddick's reputation and presence in this criminal underworld to stay alive.

We moved quickly through the darkness, after a while the speed took its toll on me, making my breath come quicker and my already dry mouth feel parched. What I wouldn't have done at that moment for a cup of water.

I nearly fell flat on my face as my feet came into contact with something solid and I tried to put my hands out to catch myself on what I figured was a wall. Riddick pulled me up before I hit the ground with the back of my shirt, the collar choking me slightly as I regained my footing.

"You walk up stairs, Jack." He hissed in my ear and I couldn't keep the flush of embarrassment from my face as I half scrambled up the roughly hewn stairs and onto a new level. Fuck him for not warning me about the damn stairs when he knew I couldn't see for shit. I guess some would probably call it payback for making his life a hell of a lot harder in the middle of a brawl.

Five minutes later we made a sharp right and Riddick gave me a shove to the left. My shins struck an unyielding surface and I was pitched forward onto the hard mat of a cot. We were in another cell two levels up from the last one I was in.

"Was that fucking necessary?" I asked as I gathered my leg up and sat cross-legged, with my back against the wall looking out into the black expanse that was the middle of the cell. I got no response but then I hadn't really been expecting one.

It hardly seemed fair to me that he was pissed off at me for saving my own skin and making it possible for me to fight my way out of a potentially lethal situation. I knew better then to voice my opinion to that effect so I pulled out my Wang, my finger running up along the grip to the side of the barrel and flicked it back to voice activation.

The buzzing sound of electricity overhead caught my interest and the noise like a foghorn blasting was enough to make me cringe. The lights flickered on overhead and the hallways, which had been full of inmates, were suddenly empty and I couldn't help but feel unnerved.

Riddick was standing at the doorway, looking out over the now empty hallway, in his hands a pair of dark goggles that I recognized. He quickly put them on before looking over his shoulder at me.

"Lockdown?" I asked.

"They found the mess you left." He replied with a nod.

"What now?"

"You stay here. You go out there, they _will_ kill you," he said.

"Where are you going?" I was frowning at him.

"Out," he said as he moved through the doorway and disappeared down the corridor.

Fucking trust him to leave me behind and frustrated. The story of our whole relationship! Maybe nothing had changed over the years, I mused as I tucked my Wang away, covering it with my shirt so it wasn't outwardly visible.

I sat there trying to ignore the growl in my stomach and the dryness in my throat for nearly two hours from what I could gauge. It wasn't until I heard the heavy footsteps of large men that I even bothered to pay real attention to the world around me.

"Now look what we've got here." The voice was unmistakable and I wasn't surprised to see Goldilocks standing with Scar-Face, Afro-guard and a man built like an old armored tank when I opened my eyes and looked at them from the cot that I had been deposited on earlier.

"I don't remember dumping her here," Afro-guard leaned against the doorway, leveling his weapon at me as I slowly stood.

"Heard you got past the creature we left you with." Goldilocks advanced into the cell, his rifle slung carelessly over his shoulder in the same cocky manor as the other two. Clearly I wasn't dangerous enough to have more then one weapon pointed at me.

"Apologies if I disrupted your fragile living arrangements but I didn't like the view," I quipped. A smile curved his lips and a tingle of anticipation ran down my spine. "I had bigger fish to find than that scarred up motherfucker you left me in the company of."

"Smart mouth for a little girl," Tank chuckled.

"This'll be the bigger fish that created the mess for us down on level four? Or did you manage that all by yourself?" Scar-Face seemed a little too eager to be here just to pick on me over a little thing like a few deaths downstairs.

"Me?" I gave them the most innocent look I could muster before letting a cocky-as-shit grin creep on to my face. All it was doing was disguising the fact that one again my blood was running about as cold as an ice-flow.

"Smart-alec little bitch!" Goldilocks half snarled. "Check her for me; she's bound to be armed," he snapped over his shoulder at Tank.

"Back up sweetheart and turn around," Tank drawled as he advanced on me and I did as I was told, still very aware that I had Afro-guard's weapon pointed at me and that would only change once Tank was in-between me and the rest. But, fuck, that meant letting him get a whole lot closer then I was comfortable with.

But then fucking armed fuck-wits was more about strategy then brawn.

"Put your hands up on the wall!" The command was sharp and I did so, holding my breath as he started patting me down. Starting first between my shoulder blades and working his way down. I had to resist the urge to gag or act too soon, one was just about as bad as the other.

It wasn't the usual quick sort of pat down either but then I had been counting on that. He was taking his time getting to the waistband of my pants and my ass. His hands lingering a little too long for my liking but this was where all that patience that Riddick and Wasp had impressed upon me kept me from doing anything rash. I was pretty sure that disgust was written all over my face as his hands followed my waistband slowly around and I looked under my arm, the look as much to calculate the positions of the other guards as it was to show my defiance.

"Jackpot, bitch," Tank whispered in my ear as his hand rested against the bulge that was my Wang. It was hard keeping a straight face, this time my calculations had been correct and my plan was actually working.

In the time it took him to lift my shirt and grab a hold of my Wang I had spun, grabbed the strap of his rifle and pulled it away from his body as a shocked expression passed across his face and the high voltage charge that the Wang was programmed to give to unauthorized users crackled through his body.

The first shot from Afro-guard Tank absorbed for me as he teetered off to one side and collapsed into a charred heap. The second hit the wall just left of my head spraying me with bits of rock and powder as I lifted the rifle I had acquired and fired one shot, hitting Afro-guard in the middle of the chest.

He stumbled backward, landing hard on his ass, body-armor absorbing most of the shot as Scar-Face rushed me, not even bothering to lift his weapon and caught the butt of his friend's rifle in the face. Somehow the fuck still managed to rip it from my hands as he went down and it all went downhill from there.

Before I was able to do any more damage I was thrown backward, my breath being knocked out of me as I hit the floor and then dragged back to the front of the cell by my hair. God, my whole scalp felt like it was on fire as I was flipped over and a knee was planted in the small of my back.

"Not so smart now eh, little girl?" Afro-guard said as he looked down at me and I snarled at him.

"I don't think she likes being touched." Riddick's voice was calm behind him. "I'd take your wounded and go while you still can."

"Ahhh, Riddick. Nice of you to join the party." Goldilocks chuckled.

"Depends on your point of view," Riddick seemed far too relaxed but I wasn't given long to think on it as my neck was pulled sharply back and I wondered how long it would take for the fucker to rip all the hair off my head. "I'd go while you can."

"Or you'll kill us? With what?" Scar-Face asked. Riddick gave him a lazy grin and started picking out his nails with the point of a shiv. Scar-face actually had the sense to look nervous as there was the click of a hammer being drawn back on a pistol and it connected with his head.

"Or I could just fill your head full of lead." I was surprised to see Ioan standing behind Scar-Face pistol in hand, looking positively raging.

Goldilocks let go of my hair and stood upright looking between his now sweating coworker and the two men standing outside of the cell.

"Come on man, just grab Wes and lets go," Scar-Face sounded nervous and I couldn't blame him, it was no fun having a gun pressed to the back of your skull.

Goldilocks seemed undecided for a moment and then did as he was asked, throwing his unconscious friend over his shoulder and walking out of the cell, Scar-Face and Afro-guard rushing after him as I picked myself up off the floor and looked over at Ioan.

"Where the fuck have you been?" I demanded.

"No 'How are you?' or 'You're looking good Ioan' or 'Bloody hell you saved my life how can make your day more pleasant?' I'm hurt Jack, I'm hurt." He put the puppy dog expression on his face that I was all too used to and for the first time in a long time I actually wanted to slap him silly.

"Don't even try to be cute with me right now!" I retreated to the back of the cell, picking up the Wang that had started the chaos as he moved into the damn cell and leaned against a wall, looking at me in an assessing way. He was about to open his mouth and utter some cute little response I was sure as I turned and walked past him to where Riddick was standing, still casually picking out his fingernails, half an eye intently on the exchange. "Riddick?" I whispered and his attention switched back to me.

"Jack." He responded.

"We have to get out of here until the heat is off." I said and he pulled a crude stoppered container out and handed it to me. I unstoppered it and lifted it to my nose. The cool wet smell of water wafted up to my nostrils and I gave him a grateful smile before I lifted it to my lips and drank deeply, ignoring the stale slightly metallic taste. His lips turned upward in a quick smile as I re-stoppered the container and handed it back to him.

"Come on, this place will be heaving with guards soon." Riddick nodded to me and I looked over my shoulder at Ioan who was standing in the doorway of the cell watching us a little too intently.

"Lets move Ioan." I motioned for him to follow with a jerk of my head and then looked back to Riddick. The frown was back as he looked at my friend and fellow assassin. I kept my gaze level and after a moment of deliberation he nodded his head and we moved off.

All I could feel radiating off of Ioan was a fully charged tension as he walked barely half a step behind me, he would have been charging all over my heels if he hadn't had the sense to walk to one side of me. I already knew very well just how Ioan felt about Riddick and with the somewhat interesting way that our relationship worked, I wouldn't be surprised if he went all possessive on me and that would not go down well with Riddick!

Riddick led us steadily downward and stopped maybe two levels before we hit the ground floor. He took a number of bizarre turns, I was sure at one point that we were doubling back on ourselves, before leading us up a flight of what looked like old maintenance stairs.

At the top was a long corridor that I had to duck to walk through and five minutes later we stopped at Riddick opened a hatch in the floor and disappeared down it. I moved toward it somewhat cautiously and looked down to see Riddick looking expectantly up at me and then the frown appeared again as I felt Ioan lean over my shoulder to have a look for himself.

I dropped down and looked around at the small room that I had landed in. I'm sure when Butcher Bay had first been built the walls of the room had been shinny enough to see your face in but now the metal had rusted and browned with age and misuse. There were three slowly turning turbines on one wall and it was these that a gentile light filtered from.

"Where are we?" I asked as Ioan landed and Riddick re-fixed the panel above us and peeled his goggles off as the room was plunged into shadow.

"The maintenance room for the prison's ventilation system. It's not used any more, too many maintenance men got killed coming down here." Riddick replied.

"Are you hurt?" Ioan ignored Riddick completely as he turned to me, frowning. The jovial side of him seemed to have switched itself off in the time our journey took. "You're limping and holding your bad arm."

"How about we leave the physical assessments for the moment and concentrate on where the fuck you were." I was too pissed at him for pulling stunts to appreciate the concern he was showing.

"That doesn't concern you." It was as if a switch had flicked and suddenly he was all ice.

"It does concern me when the whole point of you even being here is to help me not fuck off and do your own thing." I snapped at him. It was strange how he could go from a royal goof-off to a concerned friend to an aloof stranger.

"You have your orders Jack and your agendas and I have mine. I don't have to explain myself or answer to you, so get off your damn high horse." There was a tightness to Ioan's voice that only served to make me more upset.

"This isn't a game you can screw with; this is a job I've worked very hard to make happen. You are only here because Bella thought that you would make my life easier therefore you do answer to me. Don't make my job harder!" Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Riddick's eyebrows rise as he watched the scene, his arms folded across his chest and that deep frown on his face that showed just how he felt about the situation.

"You're making it hard for yourself without any help from me Jack. Don't make me pull rank on you because last time I checked I was a run above you on the call list which would mean you answer to me." He was somewhat glib with me.

"I've never answered to you and you are only number two because I have two fucking jobs." My reply came as a snarl. I had only ever answered to Bella or Wasp, Ioan had never factored into any of my kills.

"We are not playing 'who's the better killer' Jack."

"But it's my favorite game." I said sarcastically.

"And yet you're the one with all the guilt hanging over your head." He said it so quickly that it almost caught me off guard but then I knew how he felt about my morals and I wasn't about to let him use them against me.

"Means I'm still human, that I at least know the difference between right and wrong so don't start your bullshit." He almost looked a little upset for a moment that I would even suggest that by his very nature he wasn't as human as the rest of us but he quickly covered it with a stormy look that I took as a challenge.

"My bullshit, take a look at your own for once. Just because you had a shitty childhood Jack and choose to put yourself under the guardianship of a renowned killer does not give you shit over anyone else. If it did, I wouldn't be here to keep your ass out of trouble."

"I don't need you to keep my ass out of trouble. I never have." I couldn't help but sound incredulous. Sometimes the ass just thought far too much of himself.

"You sound like you need a good shake to pull you out of the little fucking dream land you're living in." He started moving toward me purposefully as if he was actually about to carry out his threat but a hand on his chest stopped him. Riddick had taken that as the perfect opportunity to join in the argument by stopping Ioan in his tracks.

"Back off." His voice was low, threatening without any words of actual intent.

"I'm grateful and all for the place to lay low but this has nothing to do with you." Ioan looked down at the hand still planted firmly on his chest with distain.

"Jack is my business which makes this everything to do with me."

"You don't want to pick this fight Ioan." I cautioned, recognizing the quiet danger that lurked in Riddick's tone. As pissed as I was, he was still the closest thing I had ever had to a best friend and I didn't want to see him hurt.

"Stay out of it Jack!" Ioan turned a sharp glare on me and I bristled. Typical, I try to save his ass and get nothing but shit for my trouble but I'm supposed to kiss his ass every time he gives me a little bit of advice.

"You might want to listen to her; I eat kids like you for lunch." Riddick had a somewhat apprising look on his face and I couldn't help but foresee this getting nasty without an intervention.

Why was it always the case, that when two men who were both dangerous and powerful were put in each others company there was always a testosterone filled struggle for dominance? And why was it always somewhat worse when there was a woman stuck in the middle?

"Don't play mind games." I chided him, not about to let either of them forget that I was there. If it came to blows, I was going to have a hard time separating them on my own. Hell, who was I kidding, if I got in-between them if they decided to punch the shit out of each other, I was going to get my ass handed to me yet again.

"When I need your help to handle my business, I'll ask. I don't need you to protect me Jack, this sort of intimidation means shit." Ioan wasn't looking at me anymore, he had turned toward Riddick and as he had done so Riddick's had retracted his arm so it was back by his side.

"You have got to be kidding me." I said in a hiss under my breath as I shook my head, this was unbelievable.

"And yet she is the only reason that you are still alive." I was aware of Riddick's hand slowly moving toward his shiv and that's when I finally had enough of it all.

"Enough!" I moved between them quickly, planting a hand on Ioan's chest and giving him a small push away so I had more room and looked between them, my lips set in a thin line and my brows furrowed slightly. It was my serious look, what Anna called my 'pissed as hell' look. "Now is not the time or the place to start this shit. I may have expected this kind of behavior from you Ioan but not from you Riddick, so how about you both stop acting like a couple of Neanderthals. I am not some bitch to be dragged back to your cave by my hair!"

"Next time define your expectations Jack, less room for disappointment that way." Ioan looked plain sullen as I rounded on him once more.

"You want to know what I expect from you? I expect you to start behaving like my friend and the trained professional that you are. I expect you to put aside any irrelevant problems that you have with this situation so _maybe_ we could all work together to stay alive for the next five or six days."

"Jack-" Riddick's voice held a warning in it that for once in my life I wasn't about to take. Survival might be easy for both of them but so far it hadn't been for me. As every fucker in this damn slam had already put it, I was just a piece of meat on a slab to be taken advantage of left right and centre and I was sick of it all.

"I'm not asking you to like him Riddick or for him to like you but you know this prison from the inside, we don't and if you asked us to or not, we are doing this for you. Regardless of the rules this is a golden opportunity and all three of us have a very unique set of skills. How about we take advantage of that fact and get you back to the real world?"

"I don't need your help, Jack."

"So you keep saying but there's an opportunity here that'll get you out sooner then if you go this alone." I watched his jaw tighten and the muscles in his neck tense. That's when I knew that I had to try a different tactic, Riddick didn't want my help and it didn't matter how many times I offered it to him, he wasn't going to bite.

"I work alone, Jack." He moved closer to me, his eyes flickering over my head, daring Ioan to try and interfere in the game he was running. I felt him move behind me but waved him off with one hand and kept eye contact with Riddick. He had already played this game with me once today.

"You're right, you did ninety percent of the time." I clenched my jaw, knowing full well I had never won in this game and I had never, _ever_ won an argument with Riddick straight out. "The other ten percent I was there, I was your lure or your accomplice. I remember a time or two when it wasn't you who ended up pulling the fucking trigger."

"You were trigger-happy and nervous, anyway, it wasn't always safe to leave you alone and you had to learn," he crossed his arms, that assessing look on his face as he continued to stare me out.

"You're right, I was, and you taught me how to deal with the nerves. Now I need your help to learn another lesson, how to survive Slam." I said, jumping in again before he was able to speak, "Ioan has his own agendas in here, he's not much of a teacher anyway. That leaves you!"

"You can't trust me, Jack."

"I _can_ trust you; you're one of the only people in my life I've _always_ been able to trust," I shot back. "So teach me Riddick, or can't you?" I was loosing the battle of wills, all I had left were words.

"I shouldn't have to teach you!" He nearly roared and it wasn't until then that I noticed that I had slowly been moving backward as my heel stuck the wall behind me. "I let myself get caught and have spent the last five years in here so you could finally have a life. I knew I should have left you with the damned holy man, you were always too fucking needy." That stung a little and I held my breath for a moment while he crowded me. Looking into those silver eyes was like looking into a fire. I had done the one thing I had always been too good at, pissing Riddick off. "Then I find you in here, the one place I did everything to keep you out of."

"Well, you didn't leave me with Imam. You trained me, gave me an eye for our line of work. Living with Imam would have damn near killed me. I know, I tried!" I kept eye contact with him as best I could and clenched my fists. "So stop preaching that you keeping me was a bad thing or I'm going to start thinking you can actually feel guilt."

Silence filled our hiding place. Charged silence, like the calm before a thunderstorm when everything is still. He was still looking at me, I could feel it but I found myself looking at the floor at his fucking boots. He had done it, he had won the fight and I had pissed him off. Stupid fucking move on my part.

"Fill him in on the rules," Riddick's voice was hardly detectable as he motioned with his head toward Ioan as I looked up and he replaced his goggles.

I couldn't help but stop breathing for a moment, I hadn't expected for him to say anything and I had nearly missed it. I gave him a somewhat blank look as I watched him move to the hatch and open it before I thought to do anything.

"Does that mean you're going to help?" I called out to him but he had already disappeared upward and the hatch closed above us with a metallic 'click'.


	13. Chapter 12

This one has taken a while to be completed, even for my standards of somewhat long stretches between updates. Sorry. Just one of those things. Lets just say I lost my way for a while and I was carefully directed back onto the right road.

K-Marie-M - Boys will be boys, that is a very true statement. I guess all I can do is hope to continue to live up to expectations.

Cateyes120 - If anyone can piss off Riddick, it's going to be Jack but it works both ways methinks.

Claudizion - Riddick and Ioan do have feelings for Jack but two very different sets of feelings. She has a quality that seems to attract people.

JL69 - I'm glad you like, unfortunately however my update times are never too close together, work and a perfectionist's mind make it nearly impossible.

Nothingsnobody - Tension isn't going to be worked out anytime soon I'm afraid so stick with me.

Thug-4-Less - What would I do without you pushing and prodding me in the right direction? Thank you for everything!

* * *

Chapter 12: Shifting Dynamics

With nothing to do and rules that don't allow you to hardly breathe unless you have permission, time slows and spins out of your control. Inactivity makes time drag slower and slower. Hours turn into days, days into life times before time all seems to merge to form one big blur. It creates restlessness and in my case and caginess that comes out in aggression and that was just after day one.

Ioan and Riddick seemed to conspire together against me. They came and went from my prison safe room almost at will, ignoring each other for the most part but there seemed to be two unspoken agreements between the two of them; I was not to be left on my own and they would not stick their necks out for each other.

Food and water appeared from one or the other without me having to say anything. After six days in slam I wasn't perhaps in the worst of conditions but I felt and was pretty sure, I looked rank. So not only was I feeling cagy and trapped but I felt disgusting on top of it.

To try and sooth my own frustrations I took to pacing, an occupation that drove Ioan close to madness and that Riddick out right ignored like he was inclined to do to my conversation. Depending on which side of the room I was intent on pacing it took me six or nine strides to get from one wall to the other. The more I paced the more ludicrous plans to escape my protectors turned wardens popped into my head, a few took considerable will power to quash.

"Jack cut it out!" Ioan snapped. I turned my head and glared at him in the middle of stride seven but didn't grace his annoyance with a reply, instead I carried on pacing. The urge to knock heads together growing as I felt his eyes burning into me as I moved.

He had come back in not twenty minutes earlier, a cut on his arm that ran from his shoulder nearly to his elbow, some new bruises and a split lip. A foul mood to go with the injuries seemed to follow him making him refuse any help in dealing with the cut.

Sometime during our argument over it, Riddick left.

I had left Ioan to his bad mood and gone back to pacing. My thoughts were fragmented between thoughts of our departure, home and a hot shower. I was staying away from the imminent escape, god knows why.

All I had to do was get through the next twenty six hours and forty-two minutes without killing Ioan or alienating Riddick totally and I could spent the next week doing whatever the hell I wanted. Unfortunately the pent up aggression I had been trying to hold a lid on was not cooperating with my plans of staying peaceful.

"What do you want for your birthday? We should probably have a party this year." I froze. Ioan's voice had caught me off guard. Of all the things I thought he could have brought up, the imminence of my twenty-fourth birthday had not been one of them.

"We are not talking about it." I said in a tone that was, I thought, very final.

"It's not every day you turn twenty-four Jack. I'm sure we could come up with a few interesting ways to celebrate." I couldn't help but hear the suggestion in his voice. It was as if a hint of the less serious Ioan that hadn't surfaced since he had been forced not only to work along side Riddick but to follow his orders if the need arose, was trying to make an appetence.

"Knock it off!" I shook my head. This was not the time or the place to be discussing something so bloody trivial. The idea of actually marking my birthday for once was almost as distasteful to me as my pacing was to him.

"We're going to be out if here in less then two days. While you have the time you should make some plans, your birthday, the holiday you've got coming up." Ioan shrugged.

"I plan to work when we get home, a lot." I snapped. "Not take holidays! And if Bella has any sense then she'll send a few marks my way."

"Blood thirsty some Jack?" Ioan laughed, shaking his head as he stood up and stretched, touching his injured arm a littler gingerly. It had started to bleed again.

"You might want me to have a look at that. It might actually stop bleeding if it's dealt with properly." I shrugged, turning away from him and going back to my pacing. I already knew that he was going to refuse but at least I had offered.

"Why do you try to pick fights all the time when you know what the out come is going to be?" He gave me somewhat of a bland look.

"For shits and giggles." I replied, my tone just as pointed.

The headache inducing sound of the lockdown sirens made me grit my teeth. The cool metal walls of my safe room made the sounds reverberate around us. I clenched my fists as the turbines shuddered and whined for a minute and the light that filtered through the old welding intensified.

I moved to the hatch and looked up. Ioan stopped what he was doing and was watching me intently. It was as if he was trying to read my mind work out what my true intentions were. I looked over at him and met his eyes. This time he probably knew exactly what I was thinking.

"I'm sure Riddick will be back soon." He said.

"I'm sure you're right." I replied. "He's not any better company then you are these days though."

"Was he ever?" Ioan scoffed. Who was trying to pick a fight now?

"Don't even bother going there." I warned. I was not in the mood today.

"Well so far I haven't seen any reason for you to admire that man as much as you do." He replied. I looked over at him and growled, my hands clenching at my sides.

"I'm warning you Ioan. Stop. Now." I gritted my teeth.

"This isn't going to turn out the way you want it to. The minute we bust him out of here, he's going to jump ship and you'll never see him again." His voice was level and calm, telling me truths that I had known since the moment that I had first encountered Riddick in his slam world. I had just never vocalised them. Ioan saying it however did not improve on my temper.

"I know that but that isn't the point. If he's not in here, he's free. Predators like him weren't made to be locked up." I answered. "Don't tell me, you'd rather leave him behind when the going gets good."

"And what if I said that was exactly what I'd rather do?"

"Then you're a fucking bastard and I'm better off without your help." I moved away from him, my expression cold, back to the hatch.

"Whoa Jack," He seemed a little perturbed. "I was being honest so now you're telling me to fuck off?"

"I need you on side but I can't trust you to be there can I?" I replied evenly.

"I guess you already decided that when you picked sides." There was a hurt that I could vaguely detect underneath the carefully constructed mask that was there on his face. Even in the strange light of the little ventilation room with the bruises and the weary expression he was still handsome. I was reminded of why I had been both drawn to him and repelled by him at the same time when we had first met.

"You were always my friend but there was never any question of where my allegiances were. I was just hopeful that it was my side you were on." I reached up and opened the hatch, Ioan inched forward but a sharp look from me stopped him. "You may as well tell Riddick that I'll explain when I get back 'cause it's you who's going to get hurt if you follow me." And I hoisted myself out of the room, replacing the hatch behind me.

Butcher Bay, Triple Max Slam, inhabited by the scum of the universe did not seem like the frightening and threatening place that I knew it to be in reality. In the flickering electric lights it look run down and dilapidated, some cells were missing doors completely, others hung half off on rusting hinges, debris covered sections of the walkway and the round rec areas that were randomly placed throughout the many tiers.

There were two guard stations on every level with four on level six where the mess hall was located, though it didn't seem that the guards were all that interested in coming out to play this time. The ventilation systems were located on the third level and the old builder's tunnel that would lead us out onto the launch pad was on the ground floor, next to a guard's station and was sealed with a coded door, a code that both Ioan and I had memorised before wasp and I had escorted Bella and Anna to their mountain home.

4370647916

The ten digit code had been burned into my memory. Lucky that they had never thought to finger print or DNA encode the lock as well. It was likely that my very life was going to rely on that number as well as Riddick's freedom.

I moved carefully into the shadows that the dim lights made, moving carefully around occupied cells and guard stations, crude little hut like buildings that they were, if that were possible, more dilapidated then the slam itself. They were, every one that I had seen anyway, a rust brown color, covered in graffiti and waste. From what I could gather, there were four guards in every stations but as of yet I had seen no sign of the guards that had been my ordinal tormentors. If I met them, they were fare game.

Hell, I wanted to meet them; a little hunt would have been very nice.

A hand descended on my shoulder and I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart pounding a little quicker in my chest as I slowly raised my hands. There was a rough chuckle behind me. "Check and see if she's armed." It said and I felt the mouth of a rifle against the back of my skull.

'_Here we go again.' _I thought with a touch of irony as another guard half limped forward, into my view.

"You heard what happened to Wes, maybe we should just escort her up; let them deal with disarming her." He looked over at the guard behind me. I chuckled and Thing 1 pushed the muzzle a little harder against my skull. My exploits were well known so it appeared and that please me for some reason.

"If you find anything on her, make her chuck it." Thing 1 said and Thing 2 came closer to me, seemingly happy with his companions idea.

"We should just shoot her." Thing 2 grumbled and I tensed slightly.

"And then what dumbass? Boss wants her out of here alive. Just get on with it!" Thing 1 was a little too impatient. I smirked but questions were running a mile a minute through my head.

Why was Rachel O'Hare trying to pull me when I was so close to completing my allotted time in slam? Did Wasp know what was going on? What trouble had I let myself in for now?

Shit!

"I don't suppose she had to be unharmed when we pull her?" Thing 2 had a vengeful look on his face. Clearly they were a little pissed about what I had done to Tank. Thing 1 didn't reply which I was pretty sure was as good as an affirmative.

I let the bastard get within arms length of me before giving him an evil grin and before he could react, I had dropped down into a crouch. A searing pain shot up the length of my back as the flash of rifle fire went over my head, hitting Thing 2 in the throat as I swept the legs out from underneath Thing 1.

"Who the fuck gave you orders to bring me up?" I had caught the rifle out of the guard's hands as he fell and had it planted against his forehead as I stood. My back hurt like fiery hell, liquid that I knew to be blood was seeping slowly out of the long gash that had opened, the offending blade still in Thing 1's hand. At least it hadn't hit anything vital, if it had, the blood flow would have been a whole lot faster.

Thing 1 just blinked at me dumbly and he had called his dead friend a dumbass.

"I would answer my question motherfucker because I will kill you." I fired a warning shot next to his head and he flinched.

"The Warden." He rasped.

"Why?" I snapped.

"I dunno for sure. Alls I know is what I heard. The man as brought you in wants you out. Me and my buddy found that friend of yours hours ago, told him. Give him the message we were supposed to."

"What message?" What fucking message? What did Ioan know that I didn't? What had changed, what was he hiding from me? I lost track of the conversation for a moment as I tried to work out what sort of message Wasp had been trying to get in.

Shit!

"I dunno..." He was still babbling on about it being on paper. I ignored him and pulled out my Wang, putting it to a stun setting as his eyes grew wide. He passed out before I even shot him. I shook my head.

I collected the other rifle as I contemplated my options for a moment before coming to the simple realisation that I only had one option. I had to go back to Ioan and let him fill me in on the full situation right away. There was no way in hell I was marching up to another set of guards unprepared.

Shit!

My plans were being screwed with and I didn't appreciate it one bit. As good as my planning seemed to be, I had never been able to factor in variables the way that Riddick had been able to.

I was making too many mistakes. Mistake one: too many people were key players in the success or be failure of said plan. Wasp and Ioan, Bella and her pilot, the damn warden who could never really be trusted. Mistake two: I had fallen out of the loop. I had let Riddick and Ioan run the show without keeping my own finger on the pulse of the whole thing.

I was a trusting fool and I knew it. I knew and had been trained against stupid planning errors like this one but something about being in this world had made me feel green as heck. Problem was I was a little late in my realisations.

I moved as quickly as I dared back to the safe room. Taking care that I wasn't followed and taking as many detours as I dared every time that I felt I had been noticed and I was far too easily noticed I felt. I couldn't help but be grateful for the hours that I had spent pouring over the prison blue prints. Perhaps fourty-five minutes later, I opened the hatch and slid down.

Ioan looked at me somewhat passively as I drop down into the room and then looked up for a moment to see that no one had followed me. I moved as quickly as I could across the room and gave him a level look, making sure he knew I was pissed and serious before I even opened my mouth.

"Why are the guards being given orders to apprehend me?" I asked.

"Riddick went out looking for you. He was pissed Jack." Ioan ignored my question as he looked up at me and I snarled.

"Riddick isn't here now, I am and I'm the one pissed so worry about me and answer my fucking question." I knelt down and got right in his face, the two rifles that I had drug back to the hide away with me, were discard by the wall next to us.

"Wasp had a second set of instructions for both of us. I already carried mine out but for you to do what you're supposed to you get to go into guard land." Ioan replied. "You're time in slam is up, you get to go back to the real world."

"There was never any intention of getting Riddick out of here was there? Bella played me, you all played me!" I yelled, suddenly I didn't care if our hideaway was found or not. I was a fucking fool and I was finding it out the hard way.

"Calm down!" Ioan said through gritted teeth.

"Fuck you. Of all the god damned people to play me I never thought you would. Shows how fucking naive I am." I snapped, a hollow laugh escaping my lips.

"Stop acting like a brat, no one is playing you. Everything is going to plan, you're just not going to be the one taking him to the ship, I am. You're going to be taking care of this little job Bella wants you to do. He'll be with me when you and Wasp get to the ship." Ioan put his hand on my wrist and applied gentile pressure. "No one is betraying you, least of all me. I care too much; no matter what I think of him so can you please remove the shiv from my neck?"

I blinked and looked down at my own hand. I couldn't remember putting that blade to his neck let alone taking it from it's place but it was there. A few miniscule drops of blood had welled around the sharp edge as I had pressed and I felt a twinge of guilt.

"Who were you supposed to kill?" I asked, lowering my hand.

"You remember James Bauer?" He asked with a sigh as I replaced the shiv and sat down across from him. I nodded. "His brother was sent to slam for the murder of Bella's aunt after he was finally caught twelve years ago. She wanted him dead, her sort of revenge I guess."

"Who am I supposed to kill?" I gritted my teeth. The night that James Bauer died still made me feel uneasy but new questions had been brought to mind. Had he had a part in the death of Bella's family?

"I dunno. Wasp's the only one that does." He shrugged.

"Why me?" I asked. "Why not Wasp?"

"You're an assassin Jack. You belong to her, she'll give you a mark if she feels like it, it's the job." He replied, rolling his eyes at me.

"What now? I not exactly going to present myself to any old guard that comes around the corner." I shook my head.

"Come on you're smart, stop thinking like a victim and start thinking like a professional. This is piss easy Jack, think." He ordered. I sat in silence in front of him for a few minutes before grinning at him.

"I've been acting like a fucking green kid."

"Do you want me to agree or disagree with that statement?" Ioan laughed.

"I guess I better start behaving myself again." I couldn't help but chuckle.

"I'd have to agree with you there. So do you want to wait for Riddick or do you just want to get this over with?" He asked standing and then helping me to my feet.

"I need to explain this myself." I sighed.

"You're right; you do have some explaining to do." Riddick's gravely voice said from below the hatch and I winced. This was not going to be fun.

I turned to face him, unsure what he was going to do or even how much he had heard. I was about to open my mouth to talk but I wasn't given a chance. Ioan put his hand on my back and I let out a cry of painful surprise. The will power it took to stay standing bringing tears to my eyes.

"What the fuck?" Riddick had instinctively reached out for me and I was clutching one of his arms with as much strength as I could muster as I tried to control the spasming muscles in my back.

Ioan was staring dumbly at his hand that had come away somewhat slick and then he looked over at me. I must have been pale cause I certainly was shaking almost uncontrollably. "She's cut." He frowned, addressing Riddick rather then me with his statement.

"Fuck." I hissed, closing my eyes and slowly pulled myself back together. Gritting my teeth as I straightened up again and pushed the pain behind carefully erected barriers until there was just a dull ache that I couldn't quiet get rid of but I could live with.

"Jack?" Riddick said.

I didn't answer him.

"Jack?" This time I opened my eyes and looked at him. "You alright?" I nodded and let go of him.

"Jack-" Ioan started but I cut him off.

"Later." I said quickly. "I don't know how much of that you caught but I'm being pulled out of here." I launched into my explanation and Riddick frowned. "In just over twenty-four hours there is going to be a riot. During that time a guard station on level one is going to be empty, next to it is an old access tunnel that will lead you out to the launch bay where a ship will be waiting for you."

"And you will be where?" He asked.

"If I don't arrive within the allotted time I am to be assumed dead and I'll be left behind." I answered matter of factually. "The entrance to the tunnel can only be accessed through a coded door. The code is 4370647916, Ioan knows it too. He'll be leaving with you."

"Too many variables Jack." He responded. I shrugged; I had come to that realisation earlier.

"But it'll work."

At least in theory it would.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Back To Reality

I left the main population of Butcher Bay in much the same fashion as I had arrived. In the middle of a heavily armed group of guards. Although this time there were no heavy chains around my wrists or ankles, the guards were letting me set the pace and giving me a somewhat respectful berth even if I was sent vengeful looks every now and then.

We took a different route then before, the harsh white lights overhead stinging my eyes, but I didn't care. Although I was alert, I had left my thoughts behind the guard hut where Riddick and Ioan had left me. I had nabbed a guard and threatened to kill him if his buddies didn't get Wasp on the horn. I could feel Riddick's eyes burning holes into my back then as I waited and then the sensation disappeared the moment that my superior arrived.

Part of me wondered if I would see Riddick at the ship or if he would choose against my plan because of Ioan. Would Ioan really help him regardless of how he felt? Would I survive the assassination that I still knew nothing about and yet knew I had to carry out?

So many unanswered questions and I found that I wasn't really looking for answers either. It was so much easier to be numb to the 'what ifs'.

Wasp was walking behind the group of guards escorting me but I had said nothing to him nor had he said anything to me. For the first time since I had started my training under him, I felt uneasy in his presence and under his scrutinising gaze. I guess that was to be expected under the circumstances.

We stopped at a large set of double doors, the coded panel on the left hand side read – Med-Bay. I should have guessed Wasp would have made this our first stop but truth be told; I wasn't looking forward to seeing what I looked like in a mirror. I already knew I looked rank, battered and bruised; I didn't actually need to see myself to confirm it.

The guards in front of me parted and I felt a hand descend on my shoulder. Without thinking, I grabbed the hand by the thumb, twisted the wrist around and pulled the arm behind the back that it belonged to. Wasp turned his head to look at me as half a dozen rifles were pointed unceremoniously in my face.

"That'll do, Jack." He said in that calm patient tone of his and I slowly released him. I understood that at that moment in time I needed to at least appear to be completely under Wasp's control. We both knew that my reaction was only natural after my stay underground.

I stepped back, composing the look on my face as I casually tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear and made a mental note to have it cut when and if I got out of this whole mess alive and kicking. I had a long list of things in my head to do what I got home. On top of that list was seeing to the letter that James Bauer had given to me, cutting my hair, getting my shoulder seen to, talking to Bella about getting an appointment with one of her regen surgeons about the scar that was going to be my back… the list went on and one.

"I'll handle this situation from here." Wasp addressed the guards, motioning to me with his head for me to enter the med-bay where an old man in his late sixties at the very least was standing looking at us, his white coat seeming at least three sizes too big.

I did as I was bid, ignoring the guards completely as we walked though the double doors and they closed behind us. I looked at the doctor who seemed to be assessing me as we moved toward him and he didn't even flinch under my gaze. He'd probably treated his fare share of nasty, fucked up prisoners in his life.

"What's the damage?" His voice was low and gravely as if he had carried a bad smoking habit through his life.

"Nothing a shower and a change of clothes wouldn't sort." I said evenly, turning a slight glare on Wasp. He knew I hated doctors!

"Turn around Jack." Wasp ignored the look I gave him. I sighed and turned around, hoping that the doctors in this hellhole had more advanced technology then a needle and thread.

"Ahh." The doctor was suddenly up behind me, his fingers probing around the tender flesh of my wound, every nerve in my body was screaming at me to turn around and ghost the motherfucker.

I stood still.

"I'd work quickly with this one doc; she has a tendency to get extremely cranky." Wasp said with a hint of humour as my hands flexed into fists. The doc seemed to speed up his examination and I winced as he touched a particularly tender area.

"Take your top off and jump up on that table stomach down, I'll be right back and we'll fuse that cut of yours together." The doc wandered away.

Fusing your skin together didn't necessarily hurt; it felt like pins and needles creeping along the edge of the wound and didn't take as long as a skin regen did. Wasp sat down next to me after I had pulled my top over my head and laid down on the bed. He gave me his most serious look but said nothing, which made me feel a little more anxious then I had been feeling before.

"What?" I finally snapped.

"Is this your only injury?" He said slowly and deliberately so I couldn't twist his words to suit myself.

"The only one that needs to be seen to right now. I dislocated my shoulder and have some nice bruises, maybe a cracked rib or two but nothing that can't wait until I'm outta here." I replied. "What else?" I prodded, the feeling in my gut telling me that he wasn't saying everything that he wanted to.

"Later." He replied.

"Suit yourself." I said as the doc walked back in and I closed my eyes, my mind focusing on other things as he started swabbing my back with iodine.

A little over an hour later, I was standing under the lukewarm spray of the shower in Wasp's quarters. More thankful for that shower then any other that I had had in the last number of years. I think I imagined the water running brown for far longer then it actually did. I washed my hair at least three times and my body more times then that, although I had to be careful around the newly fused area of skin.

Then it was out of the shower. At least now that I was clean, I allowed myself a glance in the mirror to see just how bad I looked. A glace was all I needed to realise that I really had been banged up over the last number of days. I quickly put a bra and panties on before stepping into my black jeans and black polo-neck top. I left my feet bare as I gathered up the dirty pile of clothes and shoved them in a bag. Those clothes were all set for the incinerator!

"Jack?" Wasp's voice was quiet as I left the bathroom, still towel drying my hair, the cold floor refreshing against my feet. I looked over at him, only realising as a sigh escaped my lips that I had stopped moving the minute that he spoke.

"Bella's psychiatrist is going to like me even less when we get home." I chuckled at my own joke, pulling myself back together enough for me to walk over to a chair by the table that my bag was sitting on. Wasp didn't seem at all in the mood for my dumbass joke however.

"Not what you thought it was going to be?" He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up.

"I dunno what I expected but what I found was in-between my expectations and the worst case scenario. I'm not dead and there's not any permanent damage that wasn't already there before." I shrugged. "Clear?"

"One hundred percent!" I nodded as he confirmed, setting the miniature computer I had pulled out of my bag down on the table next to the Wang that had kept me safe thus far as I pulled out my Popper and set about putting it into working order. "I'm assuming that the prison system got wind of Ioan's assassination before it happened?"

"You underestimate me, Jack." Wasp took a long drag on his cigarette, the acrid smell of smoke filling the room as I observed him.

"Sorry." I said somewhat flippantly and then was quiet. I wasn't going to push Wasp for all the gory details about my mark, when it was the right time he would tell me all. For once it was my turn to act out of character and be patient. I had a lot my mind could think on after all and think I did for nearly half an hour before Wasp spoke again.

"You know who Ioan killed?"

"Bauer's brother." I was blunt.

"You know why?" Same tone, slightly different question and for a moment I wasn't sure if Ioan wasn't going to get his ass kicked for telling me. I shrugged it off; I was a shitty liar so there was no point even trying.

"Killed Bella's aunt." I replied. "I made him tell me Wasp, I got hella pissed and put a shiv to his neck." I explained as I felt a sudden need to defend Ioan even if my actions incriminated me.

"Figured you'd know." He shrugged at me.

"So who'm I supposed to kill?" I fingered my Popper somewhat relived to feel the comforting wear pattern on the grip and the rough line that ran down the barrel where a blade had sliced into it. It was safe, familiar and mine.

"He told you about that too?" If I didn't know him better, I would have thought that Wasp was shocked.

"I didn't give him much choice. If this experience has taught me one thing, it's to trust people even less then I did before." I shrugged and Wasp frowned. "It's always the people that you think you know that turn out to be strangers."

"That's just reality, Jack." There was a hint of compassion in my mentor's voice.

"Yeah." I nodded. "So?"

"On with the job then?" I nodded in response. "Before I start briefing you, is there anything you want to talk about?"

"Nothing that I want to nor do I need to talk about." I replied seriously. "I just want to get on with my life and let myself hope I'll be proved wrong about reality."

"Whatever you have to do." He nodded and pulled a small computer chip out of his bag, which he handed to me. "You know the drill."

"Yes sir." I said slipping the chip into the drive of the computer and watching my information flash up on the screen in front of me.

I spent the next seventeen hours working out the particulars of the plan that Wasp had laid out in front of me. On this particular Mark, he was to be my aid and my back up. It appeared that we would probably end up running a gauntlet to get to our waiting transport and I was going to be glad of Wasp's expertise when it came to crunch time.

"You ready to go?" Wasp zipped his bag shut and looked up at me, his brown eyes taking in my whole countenance.

"As ready as we're ever going to be." I nodded, putting my Wang in its holster at my side. "So this is likely going to be a suicide mission." I commented.

"Hardly. Stick to the plan and things won't get messy, the guards will be too preoccupied with the riot to worry about us." He said with confidence.

"You had better be right." I picked up my bag and let him lead me out of his room and back into the corridor where we were met by a solitary guard.

"The Warden wants to see you before you go." He said, giving me a somewhat watchful look as I took up my position next to Wasp and waited for him to lead off.

We passed the holding chamber that Ioan and I had been stuffed into on our initial arrival to Butcher Bay; we passed what looked like a bunkhouse and a mess hall. We walked by the med-bay again and then into a little semi-circular room with three elevator doors that all lead to different places. The guard called one of the elevators down using a control panel that was linked to the security system.

We were ushered inside, the guard pressed a button and the doors closed with a metallic grinding sound that made me wince slightly, then with a speed that made me dizzy, we shot upwards. By the time that we had come to a jerky halt, my stomach was in my feet and my hands were clenched tightly shut, my knuckles turning white as I fought to control my gag reflex. Looking over at Wasp I couldn't help but be a little jealous, the ride didn't seem to have bothered him at all.

The doors opened into a sort of antechamber outside of the warden's office, which we were quickly and unceremoniously shown into.

Rachael O'Hare was standing in wait of us, talking with an angry looking Goldilocks who was currently in a heated debate with her. He looked up as we entered the room, his eyes resting on me and then at the bag in my right hand and the Wang in the holster at my waist. His face turned a little redder as he looked at me and I grinned at him.

"How's Tank, Goldilocks?" I asked calmly looking back at him. If anything his anger only worked to my advantage.

"Behave!" Wasp's voice was sharp in my ear.

"You're letting her wander around here armed and free?" Goldilocks turned to the warden once more and she looked over at me, assessing me.

"She's under control." The middle aged woman replied. "I think it's time you get back to your duties." Her tone was commanding and final and the tall, pissed off prison guard listened to her without questioning her again. He shot me a look over his shoulder as he exited through a different door and I grinned at him.

"I want to talk with the girl." She said quietly but there was a tone of command that told me that she wasn't about to take no for an answer as she motioned to me and I looked over my shoulder at Wasp. He didn't seem to care much.

"Figured you'd want to." He shrugged and nodded as the door opened to her office and I left my bag with Wasp before I went to walk in only to be stopped by the guard that had brought us up to her office.

"Drop the weapon." He motioned at my Wang and I shrugged, pulling it out of my holster and dropping it on the floor at my feet.

"I wouldn't touch it, it might actually kill you." I said as I walked past him into the office, the door clicking shut behind me.

"Have a seat." Rachael O'Hare motioned to a seat in front of her desk, which I sat on quiet happily. I would never admit it but the ride up the elevator had made my legs feel a lot like jello. "I wonder."

"You wonder what?" I asked and waited quietly as the warden buzzed through the order for a coffee to be brought in. Then Rachael took a moment or two to openly appraise me, in the same way that I had done to her when I had first laid eyes on her.

"I found it strange, I must admit when a letter arrived for me some three months ago with a request for information on one Richard B. Riddick and with a letter enclosed for the man himself. I have known Bella Greendale for years and I have never known her to do anything without a reason that led to personal gain." Rachael started to speak and I relaxed into my chair, showing, as I had been trained, no outside signs of the tension that was inside me. This woman obviously knew who I was and I was surprised to find that it didn't bother me.

"I'm sure that she has her reasons, like you said, Bella is a calm and calculating woman." I answered her. She was right; she had other motives for contacting Riddick, just like there had been ulterior motives for my stay in Butcher Bay. I was supposed to have been the bait that would convince Riddick to join her team of assassins. Bella was always looking out for the interests of her business above almost anything else.

"Believe it or not Jack, I am not cruel and heartless. I am a warden of a triple-max Slam. I will be as tough as it's necessary to be. I do not like the people in this prison. But they are still people." Rachael continued with a shrug. "I don't mind allowing them a little contact with the outside world, especially if one of my subsidizers has an interest in them but after Riddick's letter went out, I suddenly had Bella on the other end of a vid-phone telling me that she wanted members of her staff imprisoned and held in my prison for a week until she could get them picked up and brought back to her for questioning."

The tray being brought in with her coffee on it by a prison porter interrupted her at that point. She accepted her coffee and a dollop of milk with nodded thanks and then sipped on the strong hot liquid as I waited for the porter to leave again and for Rachael to continue.

"So I had a good search run on Riddick and in doing so I found out about you. I wasn't sure at first that it would be you that had pissed Bella Greendale off but I had a feeling that it had something to do with Riddick." This was the part that I had been waiting for and couldn't help but let a small smile pass across my lips. "I found out quite a lot about you." Rachael paused to let that information sink in. I was unphased; I would have thought her a fool if she hadn't done a background check on me.

"Interesting things?" I shrugged as if to say that it didn't bother me.

"I know you know Riddick. I know that you were adopted and ran away. But then there is nothing on you or about you until you magically resurfaced in New Mecca on Helion Prime as Ab al-Walid's long lost daughter. Nothing that is, besides a lone finger print that was found at the scene of Riddick's capture." She paused again before posing her question. "I wonder, did you run away to Riddick? Is that what made you such a desirable acquisition for Bella Greendale and her husband?"

"And what would he have taught me that would have made me desirable to the Vincesons?" I shook my head. I was going to make her speculate, after all I had plenty of time to kill and the warden intrigued me.

"Which job would you like me to comment on? You have more then one or you wouldn't be here." Rachael said. I always knew the woman that I was dealing with was clever but I didn't expect her to be that clever. "So tell me Miss Richman, how was it that you came to be in his custody?"

"I didn't like being left with the Holy Man, too much religion. He was fond of me at the time and made the best of the situation." I replied with a shrug as though it wasn't the most important of information.

"And your hacking?" She probed; I managed a smile as I realized that was all she thought I was into.

"I was always good with computers. He didn't teach me." I replied. "I taught myself; you can piss off a lot of people looking where you're not supposed to. I'm sure you know that too."

"So that's why you were sent here?" I shrugged. "It must have been hard for you to see Riddick driven back to Slam." Rachael said obviously trying to engage me in the conversation again.

"Who says that I was there? There are many tricks out there that place fingerprints on all sorts of surfaces." I raised my eyebrows. "I know I've pissed off more people then just Bella Greendale."

"Video Intel." Rachael replied, opening a file and handing me out pictures of myself standing talking to the cop and of the desolate expression on my face when I watched Riddick put in that armored vehicle. I just hoped that Riddick never got his hand on those. "Interesting isn't it."

"I'm surprised these haven't surfaced sooner." I shook my head. "That was a long time ago."

"What did you hack for him?"

"Nothing of interest to you. Hacking wasn't why he kept me around and it wasn't what he taught me. He taught me what people are the most likely to attack a child or someone unable to defend themselves." I answered with a shrug. "Seems I'm still not immune to attack as an adult."

"And how was that?" I could see the question I hated most behind her eyes.

"And how was what?"

"How did he teach you?" The real question she was asking me was the one question everyone wanted to ask me: _'Did Riddick abuse you while you were with him?'_ I had gotten that speech from one too many people for me not to cringe when it was asked or implied. I was probably as close as anyone out there to being a 'Riddick' expert and I knew that no one believed me when I told the truth.

"Because I always had plenty of people trying to go through me to get to him." I said. "For some reason he has always been a very popular person."

"He has." Rachael nodded her agreement. "But murder can do that to a person."

"What has always pissed me off." I said suddenly feeling the urge to defend my teenage view of Riddick even if things had changed due to my incarceration. "Is that everyone always thought that Riddick was such a blot on humanity. A rapist, a child molester, a mass murderer. He's not the rapist type. He wouldn't be caught ever laying a hand on a child. As for his murderers, I can personally discount at least thirty-six of his supposed victims."

"The crash of the Hunter-Gratzner."

"You've done your homework. The only person that Riddick killed was Johns, if he hadn't, I'd be dead." I shook my head. "Most of the people that hunted us had less morals then he did. What kind of person tries to capture and rape a teenage girl to get to a criminal?" I gave her an even look and the smile faded from her face. "Mercs, prison guards, cops. Don't talk to me about Riddick being a bad person when it was the people who caught him that did worse things then he ever did."

"Interesting take on things." Rachael finally spoke.

"It's the truth." I shrugged again.

Harsh tones of riot sirens blared out around the room and a red light flashed on a panel on a wall next to the windows that lined one side of her office and looked down into the main Slam building. I watched her closely as she stood, coffee cup still in hand as she moved to the windows. White lights turned on inside the prison and everything was brought into sharp relief. For a moment I thought of Imam's god, thought of sending a small prayer to him for the execution of my plan and then thought better of it, leaving the prayer to the holy man if he happened to be thinking of us at that moment.

"Riot?" I asked, standing, my right hand snaking slowly behind my back feeling for the handle of the rudely constructed blade that I had confiscated from the prisoner that had tried to shank me.

"Not that you weren't expecting it." She turned to me. "So am I to be your next victim?"

"Do you really want an answer to that question?" I asked, as she went back to looking out of the window.

"I already know it. I knew it the minute that Bauer was killed. I just didn't think it would be so soon." She said. "Do you even know who you really are? Has she told you the real reason that she is willing to help you, why she employed you the minute her husband mentioned you to her?"

"To quote an old man and an even older book, 'By the grace of God I am who I am.'" I replied, slowly moving closer and closer to her position as we talked. "As for the rest, I never cared to ask, it got me where I wanted to be."

"You know this conversation is being recorded?"

"The feed has been jammed and there is no one at your security stations right now to see us." I replied evenly. "I'm a hacker remember?"

"Did you kill Bauer, too?"

"An assassin did that."

"The same one that killed his older brother I'm assuming?" Rachael motioned with her hand to the desk where a set of files on the desk underneath the pictures that she had already shown me, freezing me to the spot for a minute as she looked at me. "There are things going on around you that you can't begin to imagine. There are facts about you that Bella is trying to hide and she's using you to do it. If you don't want to know the truth you don't have to look at those but I'd advise giving them to Riddick, he might just be interested."

"Riddick has nothing to do with this." I said somewhat testily.

"Make no mistakes here Jack. Riddick is as deep in this mess as you or I are. If she can't recruit him to her way of thinking or her staff then a bigger bounty will appear on his head then he has ever had." She kept talking and I kept moving. "I bet when he picked up that terrified little girl off of that planet he didn't realize what he was getting himself into or he would have left you behind. If he had, a lot of people would still be alive."

"You don't know the half of it." I agreed with her.

"I'm beginning to think that you don't have the nerve to actually kill me." She turned her head, her eyes wide as shock registered through her body, only to find me right behind her. She looked me straight in the eye and I looked back as she slowly slid off my blade to the floor. Blood covered the blade and my hand as I gave her one last look and the sound of a side door opening caught my attention.

I looked, barely letting myself register that it was Goldilocks before letting my blade fly. It hit him square in-between the eyes and he dropped like a ton of bricks. I picked up his rifle and his side arm before grabbing the files, stuffing them into the waistband of my jeans as I walked out the main door to the semi-circular room where Wasp was waiting for me.

He looked at me for a moment and I nodded sharply, throwing him the rifle before picking up the Wang from the floor where it had been left. Now it was his turn to get us the fuck out of there and to the launch bay.

Wasp led me through the door the Goldilocks had previously exited through and we started running, down a long set of stairs to ground level then a long a couple of long corridors but it wasn't until we hit the main walkway that would lead us to the ship that was waiting that we encountered fire. Under the circumstances there was nothing that prohibited them from firing at us so they did; I guess I was always going to be a target.

Prisoners were slowly leaking into the main corridor so the guards had set up a crush point and it was on their side of that blockage that we were stuck like sitting ducks. A number of them were still free to keep the prisoners from getting to the three transport ships stored in the hanger and the rest were free to aim at us.

"Those had better not be heat seeking." I had hissed to Wasp as I dropped to one knee and started firing right back. An energy blast grazed my right arm as I rolled to the left to escape a round of fire, letting off a few rounds as I went. Although I had been able to injure a few of the guards it was Wasp's shots from somewhere behind me that was thinning their numbers.

A prisoner found his way through their barrier and caught their attention, giving me time to stand and start moving backward as the prisoners started to slowly leak through the barrier. The guard's fire turned from us to the prisoners as I reached where Wasp had disappeared to, giving slight cover by a doorway. He was pulling a hastily made bandage tight around a bleeding wound on his upper arm with his teeth as I reached him, taking my eyes off the guards for a second but it was long enough for one of them to get a shot off that I didn't see coming.

It was a simple bullet wound, a through and through that hit my leg above the knee, missed the bone but felt like fire as it passed through embedding itself in the wall behind me. I dropped, my hands clutching the wound as I nearly choked on my own shout of pain. No more fire came our way as Wasp tore a strip off the shirt he had used for his own bandage and pushed my hands out of his way.

I whimpered as he wrapped it tight enough to start cutting off the blood circulation, then with both bags extending from his bad arm, he slung my right arm around his shoulders and drug me to my feet. I almost lost my balance the first time that I tried to put weight on the leg and Wasp had to drag me a few steps but once I got into a hobbling sort of rhythm and the adrenaline started pumping again, we made decent time to the coded crash doors at the end of the corridor.

I was passed the bags and leaned against the frame of the door as Wasp quickly punched in the code and the doors opened for us with a hiss and grating of metal. It was a much larger transport vessel that was fired up, idling in the docking bay in wait for us. The pilot was clearly visible in the cockpit and as we moved toward them, a ramp lowered from the hull.

A harassed, slightly worried looking Ioan stood at the top of the ramp beckoning for us to hurry. I looked behind as Wasp let off a shot that hit the control panel of the doors, making them slid shut again before any of the prisoners could escape through the doors to the other vessels. It took us a couple of minutes to make it to the bottom of the ramp where I was transferred to Ioan and half dragged up the ramp.

Riddick was waiting for me at the top, his hand on the panel that would close the ramp the minute that Wasp made it to the top. I didn't say anything to him as we moved past him and Ioan deposited me in a seat, barking a sharp instruction to buckle up for take off as he took the seat in front of me and a clang from behind told me that the ramp was closed.

I looked to my side as Riddick took the seat next to me, buckling up before looking back at me. "What the fuck happened?"

"I had some business to take care of." I replied as the engines kicked in and I was pushed back into my seat as the ship launched itself into space.

* * *

As always if you have enjoyed what you have read or have an opinion on it, please do drop me a review...thanks 

**Catseyes-120** – My theories have a tendency to do that exact same thing, usually my theories about where my own stories are taking me. Escape my main characters do but the adventure has only just begun.

**FemmePhantom** – Awww…thank you for your kind comments. You know how to make an author feel all warm and fluffy inside. I hope you continue to think so highly of my writing.

**K-Marie-M** – The whole Jack& Riddick relationship is so interesting because it could go so many ways. Having a character like Riddick who cares but it's perhaps willing to show his care the way that a more well rounded person might certainly makes his writer's life more difficult but makes it far more fun to read.

**Thug4Less** – Didn't you know you were my Shepard ;)? Thought fluffy would defiantly be the wrong word, but the image of me as a sheep is priceless. Hehehe. Again, thanks for listening to my moaning and giving me your input.

P.S. The tea has stayed firmly in view after last time…lol


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Goodbye

The minute we were in space and the artificial gravity was engaged, Riddick had me out of my chair and in one of the side bunkrooms before I could argue my case. The only thing that was said to anyone else was a demand for a med-kit. I nearly reached for my own weapon when he smoothly withdrew his shiv and made a grab for my leg.

I flinched and had to hold my breath for a minute to calm down the nervous twitch that my pulse seemed to have taken on. He looked up at me, his eyebrows folded in on themselves and I knew he didn't like the fearful look that I was giving him. It was one thing when he had just threatened to kill me in a prison cell but not when he was trying to help me. I forced myself to relax but I knew I couldn't fool him as he sliced my jeans from mid-thigh down and around so he could discard the fabric.

"It's just a through and through. It's not going to kill me so you can stop acting as if I'm about to die on you." I said as the rough bandage was the next to go and I hissed as blood started to make it's way down to my foot again. I might not have been under immediate threat of death but the wound was bleeding more then I liked and I had a sudden feeling of light-headedness.

I reached out and the first thing my hand came into contact with was his shoulder and I gripped hard, my eyes fluttering closed for a moment as I fought to gain control over my ability to stay conscious and upright at the same time. When I opened my eyes again it was to find his mercury eyes looking at me with a mixture of concern and satisfaction.

"Humor me for the moment." He said as I pulled in a deep breath, not letting go of his shoulder as he prodded around the entry wound. I hissed at him but he didn't bother responding which was probably as good a move as any considering all he would have gotten was a mouthful of abuse.

Ioan walked into the room and put the med-kit down with in reach of Riddick. I gave him a half smile as he observed us, his normally expressive face expertly schooled, and it gave me a chill. I gave him a half smile, not able to help my tentativeness with him in view of his cold expression. The smile quickly left my face as Riddick started sluicing the wound with a saline solution, I turned my head and glared at him but my head snapped round again when Ioan addressed me.

"Trust you to walk away from a nice simple job full of holes." He shook his head, his tone familiar and mocking. I relaxed. "You going to survive, sunshine?" There was the note of concern just incase things were more serious then they appeared.

"Of course I will asshole. I thought I told you never to call me fucking sunshine!" I snarled at him as Riddick's fingers probed where it was tender. "Next time _I_ get to kill the prisoner and _you_ get to run the gauntlet." I said and he chuckled. "It won't be funny when you're the one shot full of holes." I picked up the bloodied bandage that had been discarded, wadded it up and threw it at Ioan's chest.

"Now you're just acting like a baby." He threw the bandage I had thrown at him in a corner. Riddick moved away from me, leaving me to steady myself and opened the med-kit, his deft fingers moving things around as he worked out what he was going to need.

"First you call me sunshine like I'm some sort of happy clappy freak, then you call me a baby. You are just asking for me to get up and kick your sorry ass, holes and all." I said, swinging my good leg off the bed I'd been deposited on. Ioan laughed at my efforts to move as I bit back a groan and Riddick's eyes snapped up.

"Out!" He barked and Ioan stopped laughing, his blue eyes moving to Riddick's face, his mouth set in a thin line. We weren't in Riddick's world any more and I was no longer at his mercy. If I knew Ioan, he was done taking orders, it was written all over that expressive face of his.

"Ioan, can you get my bag for me. I need my handheld before we're too far away to remote access the prison database." I said, taking both men's attention away from each other and fixing it onto me. I'm pretty sure they both knew I was trying to avert a proper power struggle at that moment which made being under the heat of their gazes that much more uncomfortable. After a moment Ioan finally nodded and left the room and Riddick went back to work on my leg.

Silence engulfed us as I watched him pull out a portable skin fusing kit and some wadding and bandages.

"You'll want a doc to see to this properly." Riddick managed to say in a level tone but I was sure there was a whole lot more he wanted to say at that moment. If it was about the fucking hole in my leg or about Ioan I was sure that either way I wouldn't have liked it.

"Ioan and I are the way that we are Riddick. He rips the piss about whatever injury I've gotten myself until I forget what hurts and then he helps me patch myself up unless someone else has already done it. It's always been that way." I said, ignoring the comment about doctors. Riddick, I had learned over the years, was just as good at fixing up a good range of hurts as any medically trained fud, whatever it was he choose to do would be enough to hold until I saw a regen surgeon, I'd probably just walk with a limp for a while.

"I didn't say anything about him Jack." He said keeping his tone neutral, a sure fire sign that Riddick was pissed and didn't want to talk about it.

"No, you ordered him out." I replied. "I know you don't like him Riddick. For the record he doesn't like you either. I, on the other hand, care about you both; so back off with the macho bullshit!"

Riddick didn't get a chance to reply before Ioan walked back into the room and dumped my bag at the door. He paused for a moment, a frown on his face as he looked between Riddick and I. "Wasp told me to inform you both that everyone is to be prepped for Cryo in fourteen hours."

"You can tell Wasp that I…" I started.

"I think under the circumstances you should just do as you're told without kicking up a fuss for once." Ioan said a little sharply, cutting me off as he left the room. I sank back onto my back, my head hitting the mattress as I squeezed my eyes shut, a tight feeling in my chest that I knew well as the reaction I got when I wanted to cry.

Nine times out of ten I never did and now was one of those times that I wasn't going to let myself break. I had all sorts of damage control to do now that we were out of Slam. If Riddick stayed, as part of me still hoped that he would, my relationship with Ioan and even to an extent with Wasp was going to have to change drastically and I didn't relish the thought of those changes.

"Jack, you with me?" Riddick's voice was deep and quiet some ten to fifteen minutes later when little sound had been made by either of us.

"Yeah." I managed to say. _I always had been._

For fourteen hours we were silent. I didn't try to talk to him and he didn't try to talk to me either. Ioan was avoiding me like I carried the plague and Wasp was busy sending out communiqués. Thankfully part of those hours I spent busy hacking into Butcher Bay's computer systems and erasing any evidence of Bella or any of us. I even went as far to make a confirmation of Riddick's death some two to three days ago signed by the now deceased Devon A. McCloud, or as I had always kindly referred to him, Goldilocks. The rest of the time I spent eating a decent meal and sleeping under the ever-watchful Riddick's gaze.

I was frustrated, I realized, when Riddick left me to my work to use the shower that Ioan had just vacated. I wanted to tell him things about my life, fill him in on the things that he had missed. I wanted him to be proud of my accomplishments and to be apart of my future but I couldn't communicate any of it. Something was making me keep my silence.

Perhaps it was simply that I didn't have the right words. Maybe it was because I knew what his reaction would be to some of the things that I had to say. I think it came down to one bottom line, the fact that despite all my wishful and optimistic thinking, I couldn't escape. I could never have Riddick in my life on my terms, I would have to change my lifestyle in ways that I couldn't be totally sure that I was willing to.

I made a hasty agreement with Wasp and preprogrammed my cryochamber myself before watching Riddick and Ioan grudgingly loaded up next to each other and then each of the Captain's three crew members. I was next, the feeling of panic rising up in my throat as it always did as the door of the chamber was closed on me but thankfully darkness was quick to come with my nightmares following closely on it's heels…

I was just fourteen again, terrified as Riddick exposed two facts to a group of people whose numbers were literally being eaten into, as they waited for the lights to come back on.

I waited with Imam for nearly two months to wake up and find that Riddick had left me. I never gave him the chance but I had lain in wait, in my hiding place terrified as I wondered what he would do to me or with me when he found me.

I was sixteen, blood spattered across my face and dripping from my hands as I stood in a ruined black velvet dress over the man that I had just taken pleasure in killing. The face of the merc that I had lured and had had to kill myself in the end looking up at me as he choked on his own blood. Riddick hadn't gotten there on time…

I was eighteen and helpless to know what to do as Riddick was loaded up into an armored vehicle and driven out of my life in a horse bit and chains.

I was alone. I was hopeless. I was afraid. Over and over again on a never-ending loop that I couldn't stop playing in my head.

The door of the cryochamber opened and, after a moment or two, consciousness hit me. Without the encumbrance of chains, I was able to keep my balance as I stumbled out, my mind instantly recalling the reason why I was awake when no one else was.

I quickly checked the ship's autopilot logs to find that we were exactly a day and a half away from out destination. A day and six hours before the rest would be brought out of cryo sleep to prep the ship for landing. I took a deep breath as I went in search of my hand held console, steeling myself for the job I was about to do. I even let my fingers brush against the glass of the cryochamber that Riddick was still encased in, in his restless state, though he gave no outward sign of acknowledging my presence.

"I have a life to lead." I whispered as if to convince myself as I set up my console and spent the next couple of hours up to my elbows in hacking legal documents and arranging transfers. I loaded everything onto a computer chip after I made sure that everything was finalized and legitimate to inspection, tucking the chip away in my pocket as I limped back to Riddick's cryochamber and hit the release button.

Riddick walked out of his cryostasis as if he had never been forced to sleep in the first place but then I hadn't exactly expected him to be groggy. He watched me limp into the galley, his eyes quickly traveling over the rest of the passengers and crew still asleep in their chambers oblivious to us. I made my way to where a table and benches had been bolted to the floor and sat down on one side, my arms folded on the tabletop in front of me. He followed suit, sitting down opposite me.

"I'm terrified." I said bluntly as he waited for my explanation for the whole situation. "And the thing that terrifies me most right now is talking to you." At least the hardest part was over. I had made my biggest admission, the one that hurt the most.

"You were never afraid to talk to me Jack." He responded.

"I am right now." A sigh escaped my lips. "Things have changed so much over the past five years." I motioned between us to make my point. I looked down at my hands as I picked at a fingernail for a minute as my mind tried to formulate the words that I needed. It wasn't going to be easy for me to lay myself out vulnerable in front of him like I used to be able to do. I had gotten too used to having to protect myself and for the first time since our time together on that god-forsaken skiff we were virtual strangers to each other.

"Things change Jack." He said and then was silent as he waited for me to say what I needed to. He had always been good at waiting.

"You're right, they do. That's why we're sitting here." I agreed, as I looked up at him, my eyes locking with his, my expression nothing but serious. "I have a life Riddick, I have friends, a decent job, people that rely on me. I have to explore everything that this situation can give me." I said slowly and carefully. "I've made my choices but you have to know your options before you can make your own decisions."

"I didn't know there were any decisions to make, Jack." He said a little blandly.

"I'm giving you them." I shrugged. "I know for a fact that Bella will have a place on her staff for you if you want it. The pay is good and a lack of anyone coming after your ass is almost guaranteed. Or you can take these and the emergency ship that is in the cargo bay and walk away with your freedom." I took the computer chips out of my pocket and laid them on the table between us.

"And you're…"

"Going to be going home and back to work. Maybe visit the holy man and his family." I felt my chest tighten and my throat constrict enough to make my voice sound a little strangled.

"You seriously think sticking around is a good idea? You're going to be able to live with yourself being sent out to kill people?" I hated how unaffected Riddick seemed to be able to stay.

"If I were to go with you, I'd end up having to kill people anyway, Riddick. Death-dealing seems to be my lot in life. This way I'm doing it on my terms." I shook my head. "My apartment has a spare room, Imam would be glad to see you…" My voice trailed off as I recognized the look on his face.

"Jack…"

"I know." I said, not letting him say anything more. "Selfishly I wanted you to be a part of my life, you've always been very important to me but I want you to be free and now you are." I gave him a real smile. "So on these is your new identity, DNA coded, legal and everything. I even gave you a totally new résumé; you might get a kick out of reading it. I set up a new account for you, the money that you had saved up before you were caught is in there and a little more. I've already programmed the emergency skiff for you but you'll want to dump it as soon as you can, they probably have a way of tracking it that I couldn't think of."

"I'm not leaving you to these people." Riddick said as I pushed the information toward him.

"You don't have a choice. If I leave this ship everyone will be automatically brought out of their cryostasis and you won't be able to leave. I can't go back to the way things were, Riddick. Being in that Slam proved that to me." I said as he stood and started slowly pacing in front of me. "I thought it would be easy to give up the life I have but I don't want to. I can't spend my whole life taking orders."

"I know these kinds of people, Jack. You're going to get yourself seriously hurt." I smiled when I heard the tone of concern in his voice.

"That's life, Riddick, you don't have to try and protect me from it anymore. I'm going to be fine." I said.

"The minute you stowed away on my ship you became my responsibility, Jack." He said, his annoyance with me starting to show.

"At what point do I get to take responsibility for my life then?" It was my turn to start getting agitated. I knew that he wasn't going to make this easy for me but I had hoped he wouldn't make it too difficult either. He didn't reply so I stood and picked up the bag I packed for him. I put the computer chips into it and sighed as I watched him, watch me for a short while, my eyes hungrily taking in every detail. Part of me felt like I would never see him again. I broke the staring contest as I walked past him, through the door that would take us to the cargo bay and managed a small smile when I realized that he had followed me.

"Jack, time to be smart about this." Riddick said as we reached the ship.

"I think I'm the only one whose being smart about this. I can't leave them all behind, Wasp and Ioan, Anna... even Bella. I owe them too much. I would ask you to stay with me, part of me wants to beg you to even if you want nothing to do with Bella's job offer but I'd end up hating you because _you_ would hate _my_ life." I shook my head, making my way up the ramp that I had lowered and stowing the bag away in one of the side lockers before sitting down in the co-pilots seat and turned on the main computer system. "You going to help me or not?" I asked as I heard his boots against the hull.

He didn't say anything as he took the pilot's seat and started doing a complete system's check. His fingers moved over the levered and buttoned panels, his silver eyes flicking to and from the main computer screen.

"Do you know where you're going to go?" I asked after a few minutes of watching him work.

"Heard some rumors, thought I might check up on them." He replied.

"What kind of rumors?" I couldn't stop myself being nosey. Part of me did it just to keep him talking until the moment that I would have to get off the little skiff and watch him pilot it right out of my life.

"About a mass murder that took place a while back. I might be connected to it." Riddick looked over at me and I looked down at my hands for a minute. For a moment I couldn't help but stop and wonder if it was a mass murder that he had committed and couldn't totally remember and I was sure that he had caught the thought from the look on my face. "Not what you're thinking of Jack."

"Oh." I managed looking back up at him.

"How are you going to explain my departure and the disappearance of this skiff to your employer?" Riddick asked after a few more minutes of silence had passed us by.

"I'll tell her the truth. I'll probably have to pay for this hunk of junk but she'll understand. The whole point of this exercise for me was to give you your freedom back. That's as far as my agenda went." I shrugged.

"Dangerous move?"

"Maybe. I dunno, don't really care." I chuckled and then grew a little serious. "I killed Rachael O'Hare."

"I know."

"She was trying to tell me something, made me take a set of files she had on me. Said they had information about me that Bella was trying to cover up by killing everyone that knew." I said.

"You're telling me this why?" He stopped working and looked over at me.

"Because she said that you were in the middle of the whole thing and because I've left the files in your care. You have a right to them as much as I do and I don't want to know what they say. My past is fucked up enough without adding more shit to it." I responded. "Read them, destroy them, I don't care. No one knows I have them so no one will know you have them. I double checked."

"Bella is killing people over your past, Jack. You still want to go back and work for her? Next thing you know, your _friends_ up there are going to be sent to hunt you down."

"Maybe." I shrugged as the computer screen flashed the signal that the systems check was done and the skiff was ready for take off preparation. "It's a risk I'm willing to take." I said standing as he stood.

"And what if it's not one I'm alright with?"

"You don't have a choice unless you're changing your mind and coming back with me." I reminded him.

"Goodbye then?" Riddick said matter-of-factly as he lowered the ramp to the small skiff for me.

"You're not allowed to say goodbye to me." I said with a shake of my head and he looked over his shoulder at me, a questioning look on his face. "Even if it's true that I'll never see you again, you're going to leave me with at least a little hope that if you're ever in the area you'll stop by and that you'll call me once and a while to update me on how you are and where you are and maybe even send me a birthday card or Christmas card should you feel so inclined. It's my illusion but let me have it. Please?"

"How bout I do you one better?" I raised an eyebrow as he spoke. "I'll tell you that I'll get in touch every once in a while." He said evenly.

"Don't make me any promises you can't keep." I said evenly.

"I'm not." He replied.

"Riddick?" I asked as he turned and looked at me.

"Jack?" There was a slight frown on his face that creased his forehead. It was an expression that was so familiar to me that I could hardly keep the smile from my face. Before he could do anything about it, I had wrapped my arms around his chest.

He didn't react at first, then he took me by surprise and hugged me back. I closed my eyes, listened to his heart steadily beating in his chest. He hadn't hugged me since my eighteenth birthday and even then I had almost had to force him to. I stood there a moment after his arms had slackened around me before walking backward slowly.

"Thank you." I said as I reached the bottom of the ramp.

"For what?"

"Letting me live my own life." I replied, not wanting to break contact with him until I had to.

"All I ever wanted for you Jack." Riddick shrugged. "Be careful, I don't want to have to come back and save your ass."

"Don't get caught again cause I don't want to have to get my _ass_ thrown into Slam to get you out." I responded. "And just so you know, if you get your ass killed, I will find you and bring you back just to kick your ass." He smirked at me, his hand hovering over the controls that would lift the ramp and I nodded once, standing there as the ramp rose and the hull sealed itself. Then I made my way quickly to the bridge where I sealed off the cargo bay and opened the space doors.

"Ready for take off?" I asked into the comm-link, knowing that Riddick would hear me.

"Ready." He replied and I felt the jolt that meant that the skiff had left the ship and then watched as he piloted it out into space, did a U turn and flew away.

"Goodbye." I whispered, closing my eyes and letting my tears finally escape.

* * *

Not whatcha ya'll we expecting? Trust me this is not the end, in many ways this is just the beginning. Stick with me and it'll all make sense. If you have a moment, please drop me a line with what you think or your opinions…Thank you in advance.

**Pendragon4** – Thank you very much. I'm glad that you enjoyed. The last chapter was a little on the fast side yes but in my experience that's the way that action tends to happen, fast and furious. Hope you enjoyed the slightly slower pace in this chapter.

**Claudzion** – I'm glad you love my story. Ioan is getting a little reprieve and the chance to rebuild a little of his lost relationship with Jack over the next couple of chapters. But Ioan has not seen the last of Riddick………

**Thug-4-Less** – Ahh yes, to the moaning and the input… I don't think I was so moany this time but the input, there was a lot of that ;) Thank you so much for your help.

**Femmephantom** – The conspiracy theory is going to be kicking poor Jack in the ass soon and now that Riddick has graciously left the scene for the moment she is going to find herself floundering a bit methinks. Thanks for reading.

**K-Marie-M** – Bella makes herself seen next chapter and I can guarantee that she'll have a few things to say about the things that have happened in this chapter but it's going to be a chapter or two before the intrigue gets into full swing, poor Jack needs a little break.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Guilt Trip

"Just get it over with!" I snapped after having endured the silent treatment from Ioan and Wasp for over an eight hour stretch that started the moment they found out about Riddick's early departure. It had taken half of the drive that would take us back to Bella's home for me to finally get completely sick of it. "You both have the right to be completely pissed at me right now but I'd really rather that you'd just say what it is you have to say instead of being pissed off at me in silence."

Ioan frowned at me for a moment as if contemplating what to say before going back to staring out the window at the black nothing that surrounded us on the aerial highway at night and Wasp clenched his jaw as he looked between the two of us. The look I was plenty familiar with from training but I was surprised to find that it wasn't just directed just directed at me.

"I'm not angry with you Jack, I think what you did however was costly and reckless." Wasp said evenly, his voice staying low and calm. I couldn't remember the last time I had heard Wasp raise his voice.

"It would have been hell of a lot worse for me if I hadn't done what I had to do." I managed to keep my reply simple and my explanation to a minimum. No one would ever be able to fully understand that while I had my own life to lead, I owed Riddick that life, meaning I owed him more then anyone else who I had become close to in my life.

"I think you miss understood Bella's intentions." Ioan ground out without looking at me.

"I hope you're right but you know I couldn't take that chance." I said in a near whisper as the driver took an off ramp and Ioan locked eyes with me. We stared at each other long and hard, my gaze unflinching until I realised that he was carefully trying to mask his concern. Guilt can really be a kick in the teeth.

How badly could I have hurt him in my single minded quest to grant Riddick's freedom? I couldn't help the twinge of guilt I felt but instead of forcing myself to deal with it, I pushed it away and let it rest on top of the ache that Riddick's departure had left me with. There would be enough time for it all later. For now I had to concentrate on the situation with Bella and hope I wasn't going to get my ass totally handed to me.

"You need to learn that everyone in your life isn't trying to fuck you over!" Ioan snapped me back to the present as he finally spat out what he'd been chewing on.

"I didn't say everyone had or that everyone was going to but a lot have tried so excuse me if I show those that haven't a bit more loyalty then those who have screwed me about." I half snarled.

"I had a job to do Jack!" Ioan said with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

"A job you could have done after we had re-grouped. I had to go looking for you and just about got myself killed doing so. You have to get your priorities straight on jobs like that so you don't end up fucking your partner over." I said evenly. "Personally I've had enough of talking about it. You're the one that keeps bringing it back to that, not me so deal with your own issues and stop projecting them onto me."

"That's bullshit Jack." He glared at me and Wasp put a hand on his shoulder, the look on his face clearly intended to explain the fact that he had, had enough of this particular argument. I sat back in my seat and the car plunged back to a silence as tense and uncomfortable as the one before it.

"You have a good story cooked up for Bella that I need to know about?" Wasp asked as we cursed through the gates of Bella's home and the car stopped at the door.

"Such as?" I looked over at him and he raised his eyebrows. I sighed and shook my head. "No. Just the truth." I responded, got out of the car without waiting for someone to open the door for me and made my way up the stairs to the entryway where the weapon's locker was located where I checked in my bag, Wang, Popper and shivs.

Bella's mansion home was huge. A large stone building that served as more then just a home for what remained of the Greendale family but for numerous other members of staff and thanks to Anna, numerous strange exotic creatures too. If that wasn't reason enough for a building as large as the Greendale place, then the fact that Bella ran the majority of her business from there certainly was.

To get to Bella's main office, you had to climb the main staircase, move into the west wing, climb two more staircases before making it to the maze of corridors that brought you finally to the large double doors that would bring you face to face with Bella Greendale-Vinceson in all of her calculating glory.

The dread in the pit of my stomach grew with every step. I could see myself getting in more and more trouble the closer we got and the more I thought about what I'd done. Problem was that no matter how much I played the same events through my head, I couldn't see any way that I would have willingly done them differently.

There was no way that I could have dealt with walking down these same corridors with Riddick in front or behind me, flanked by enough muscle and weaponry to make it easy to put him back in chains. I was one of those all too few things in Riddick's life that had mattered to him and even the idea that I could be used to coerce him into anything made me angry.

Maybe Ioan was right, perhaps I was too quick to see the bad in a person and them using it rather then the good but that was my reality and it was the only one that I had. I would take serious issue with anyone that tried to tell me that my version of events didn't have a high chance of being the one that I would have been faced with. If I was a person as powerful as Bella I wouldn't let a man like Riddick wonder my home without an armed guard either.

On the other hand I still couldn't see myself on that skiff with Riddick either. It hadn't been an easy choice to make, part of me would have had me stay in that co-pilot's chair and take up my position as the know universes' most fear killer's accomplice all over again. I would have been content in his company, at least at first. I would have enjoyed the strange feelings of safety, security and comfort that Riddick had always seemed to be able to provide for me.

It wouldn't have lasted however.

Knowing that he was out there somewhere free and that regardless of whatever promises were made in the heat of goodbye, I would never see him again was a small dull, ache in comparison to the guilt and pain that it had replaced. I was preserving both of our sanities and until I walked through the double doors that numerous people were hovering outside of, I had preserved my way of life with only a few bumps and bruises.

We caused something of a stir as we arrived among the members of staff at the door. It probably had as much to do with the rumours flying around about our very noticeable absences as it did about our weary appearance. The whispers were enough to set my teeth on edge and make Ioan shift slightly in annoyance, Wasp as always seemed to take it easily in stride but then he was the master at all this, he was used to it.

"Jack!" Anna's excited squeal was the first positive noise I heard and the small crowd in front of Bella's door parted as she ran through, throwing herself at me. I ended up on my back on the floor, her weight half pinning me down as she grinned at me like a long lost friend.

"You should be in bed." I grinned back at her as she picked herself up off the floor and I followed suit, not surprised when she gave me a proper hug. Surprise, however, was written all over her face as I quickly moved my fingers up and down her sides tickling her.

"I give, I give!" She shrieked and I laughed, stopping my attack and pulling her in for another hug. "I saw you pull in." She said once her breathing had calmed down again and clearly expected me to accept that as her version of an explanation. I shook my head but found I couldn't be too mad at her.

"You had probably better run back to bed before your mom knows you're up or she's going to kick both our asses, not just mine." I realised the girl and gave her an encouraging smile and a push in the right direction.

"But I want to meet Riddick." She protested and my smile faded.

Before I was able to open my mouth to give her any sort of explanation, the door to Bella's office opened and Anna half skipped through it. I looked over at Wasp who shrugged, his lips curling down for the briefest of moments before following the kid inside, Ioan and I close on his heels.

Now the fun started.

Bella's office was large and rectangular, the dark wooden floor was covered in rugs and the large windows with their bullet proof glass were currently hidden behind heavy burgundy drapes. The room was completely lit by lamps that lined the side walls and cast shadows on the centre of the room. The walk between the main set of doors and Bella's desk is about eight feet but there are times it feels like a mile. I had spent hours in this office and the layout had never ceased to make me feel sorry for everyone who had to walk through those doors in my boss' bad books.

Bella was sat behind her desk, looking the picture of calm composure. Anna had draped her pyjama clad self over one of the big wing chairs that were situated behind Bella's desk and were used for informal meetings. She was watching us with a confused look on her face, her mother currently completely ignoring her presence.

"I thought I was going to get to meet the great Richard B. Riddick." The child said with a frown.

"Sorry to disappoint." I shook my head and shrugged.

"You wouldn't have liked what you saw if you had met him, don't be too disappointed." Ioan replied looking back at me and daring me to disagree with him. I didn't bother trying to contradict him; the truth was Riddick would probably have terrified Anna.

"How 'bout you head back to bed while we talk to your mom. I'll come up and see you once we're done if it's not too late." I said to Anna who looked over at her mother as if silently asking permission to stay and not be left out. Bella gave a small jerk of her head and Anna stood with a groan before leaving the room, the start of a huff plastered all over her face.

I sighed as the side door opened and then was closed a little more violently then necessary. That girl was going to grow up with her mother's temper and it was going to get her in some serious trouble. _You should know. _A voice at the back of my head that sounded too much like Riddick's almost brought a smile to my face.

"What's the damage then?" Bella leaned back in her chair and surveyed us. We must have looked a mess. Ioan though without any real physical injuries was a little black and blue, Wasp looked a little bedraggled even for him and I was sure I looked like a stiff wind would blow me over. I felt like it too.

"Ioan's cut but it'll heal itself. Jack's mangled her back, got a through and through on her left leg and her shoulder's going to need lookin' at again." Wasp reported.

"You might wanna have someone check out his arm too, he tried fusing it himself." I said, sitting down in one of the chairs in front of Bella's desk. If I was going to have to see a doc then Wasp was going to have to join me. I looked up at Bella and she nodded, shaking her head as she picked up a pen and a scrap piece of paper.

"And who fixed you up?" Bella asked as she scribbled something down, a frown creasing her forehead.

"Some prison doc and Riddick." I replied.

"I'm assuming it was Riddick that ran off with my pilot's emergency vessel?" She said, her eyes focused on me once more, a little harder then before.

"Yes ma'am. I paid for the skiff in full however." I answered.

"Hmm." Bella looked past me. "Everything else go to plan?"

"Everything." Ioan nodded. "There aren't anymore Bauer's out there to cause trouble."

"O'Hare slipped off the edge of a blade." I sighed as Bella looked between the three of us.

"Ioan, Wasp, I'll see you both for a full debriefing at seventeen hundred hours tomorrow. Go home, take some time and relax. I need you rested." She said. "Jack, stay behind please."

I never really got to go to school. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, far from it, I was never the school type. Besides the certification course I took to become a bodyguard, the only schooling that I had done, that meant anything was through correspondence. I had spent a short six month period in a public school however when I was thirteen. I was the poor kid that got dragged to the principle's office or made to stay behind for detention and I had that detention feeling in the pit of my stomach all over again.

Ioan stood and left without so much as a glance in my direction, there was no doubting how he felt about me at that moment. Wasp's hand, on the other side, descended on my shoulder in an awkward sort of encouraging pat and then he exited the room. Bella sat and looked at me and I looked right back, deciding that nervousness was the last thing that I should show.

"You made me think that you'd been killed Jack." Bella was clearly unhappy but not for what seemed like the wrong reasons in my book.

"What?" I looked at her in shock. Why would my death be something that would make Bella unhappy enough to get mad at me about it? I put myself in dangerous situations every day I when I was working for her, she never seemed to really bother herself over the possibility of my death before even if my heath and wellbeing had always been a discussion point.

"You went completely underground in Slam Jack. There was nothing on you until you killed those two guards and then handed yourself over to Wasp." She was leaning forward in her chair, her arms resting on her desk as she looked at me with concern.

"It's not exactly the kind of place you wanna continue being noticed in and trouble kept trying to find me." I said. "Riddick found me, kept my ass alive the only way he knew was possible. It wasn't like I was in there having a party and didn't want anyone else to know it. Just ask Ioan."

"Riddick protected you?" Bella sounded somewhat surprised. "As I heard it, you went on a couple of killing sprees."

"It's called self defence, well except for the guard I killed before handing myself in, he was an asshole and yes, Riddick still foolishly has enough invested in me to go as far as protecting me." I said a little sarcastically.

"And that's why he's not here?"

"No."

"Then explain it to me Jack because you had very clear instructions to being him back here at the completion of this job." Bella's voice was causing warnings to start flaring up all over my brain.

"It wasn't that simple. I had to give him a choice and he left. He gave me a chance at a life along time ago. I owed him the same chance he gave me." I shrugged, hoping that that would be enough of an explanation to satisfy her.

"A fresh start was waiting for him here Jack. A chance at a new life. A new identity." She said, a touch of exasperation in her voice.

"Not a life he would have wanted. He doesn't take orders. He doesn't kill anyone that doesn't deserve to die in his books. He doesn't play second best to anyone." I shook my head.

"What is it exactly that you think I wanted from him Jack?"

"You tell me. It wasn't exactly something that mattered. What did was that he got a choice, come or go, be his own boss or work for someone else, whatever."

"There's more to it then that isn't there." She gave me a level look that was meant to draw out the truth and I gritted my teeth.

"Not really. It's pretty much that straight forward."

"Then let me be direct. You didn't think I'd give him that same choice did you?" I shrugged in reply. Could she really blame me for not trusting her? "What gave you the impression that I wouldn't be more then fair toward him?"

"Nothing." I lied. "I just wasn't going to take a chance, with anyone else I might have, but not with Riddick." I looked down at my hands. "Carolyn convinced him to come back to us and when he did, I swore never to betray him or take the risk for that matter. Somehow he rejoined the human race; I'm not going to be the reason for a back slide."

"You thought I was going to make him work for me using you?" She tried for a straight answer again.

"I wasn't going to take the risk of anything untoward happening to him because of me." I gritted my teeth again. Where was the screaming? The yelling? The unreasonableness? The cocked weapons? The threats?

"I'm sorry you felt that way." Bella said softly and sat back in her chair before sighing in a somewhat disappointed way. What the hell? All of a sudden all I was hit by another side portion of guilt.

"Bella, I…" I started, suddenly feeling exhausted and guilty all at the same time.

"It's alright Jack. Go see Anna, she's just outside, trying to listen through the keyhole." Bella dismissed me with a wave of her hand, that look of disappointment still plastered all over her face as I nodded and stood, my brain trying to work out when the guilt had turned itself on.

"Bella, I…" I tried again as I reached the door but once again was cut off with a hand gesture.

"Anna will need taken to school again in the morning. I'll schedule an appointment with a regen-surgeon for after the drop off. Her father will pick her up after work and I'll send Ioan over to pick you up after his debriefing." Bella said, her tone of voice clearly meaning business.

"Ioan doesn't exactly like me right now." I paused, my hand reaching for the door handle.

"And why's that?"

"Riddick." I said simply as I opened the door and stepped through.

Bella had indeed been right. Anna was waiting for me maybe two feet back from the door. She was frowning, her lower lip inserted between her teeth in a perfect miniature of the look that I'd been having focused on me by her mother. I stifled a sigh as I looked at the kid, jerked my head to the side and started walking in the direction of her suit. Anna followed me somewhat obediently, her eyes never leaving my face.

"If you have an opinion kid, spit it out." I said as we turned onto another corridor and left the prying eyes of Bella's staff behind.

"It's not an opinion so much as a question." Anna said seriously.

"Now you've got me intrigued." I looked down at her. Any Greendale, young or old, without an opinion was an interesting anomaly.

"Did Riddick not like you any more? Is that why he left when you gave him that choice?" She looked up at me with her big green eyes, honestly interested in what I was going to say.

For a moment I was speechless!

"I wish I could answer yes to that question but it really wasn't that simple." I replied. "Someone like Riddick doesn't care easily but when they do, they care strongly and powerfully. Didn't I tell you that Riddick always said that he'd rather die then go back to slam?" Anna nodded conformation. "If I had been found with him, I would have been sent to slam too. No questions asked and he wouldn't have been able to protect me from the merc crews or the slam guards. Rather then let that happen to me, he got caught."

"So he let them put him back in slam just so no one would come after you?" It was my turn to nod. "If he cared so much, why didn't he come back with you then?"

"It's not Riddick's way. He doesn't like your mother and wouldn't have taken her up on her job offer which would have made them competitors. He wouldn't have liked my life or allowed me to live it. He cared enough about me to accept me for who I am and not try to change that. You understand kid?" I looked down at her as she slipped her hand into mine.

"Sorta but I still think that if I were you, I'd have wanted him to come back and be around me. Aren't you always going on about how he was the first real family you ever had?" She shrugged as we arrived at her suit to find her nanny asleep in front of the vid-screen.

"Been there long?" I asked as Anna walked past the lightly snoring woman and I followed her, trying to keep the look of contempt for the woman off my face.

"Since around eight." Anna shrugged as she jumped into bed and I closed the door behind us. "She's had a round day, without you around, she actually had to do some work and look after me." I swore to myself to put the fear of god into that nanny as Anna settled into her bed.

"It's not like you're hard to handle kid." I shook my head.

"I can be when I want to be." Anna gave me a mischievous smile. "So?"

"I never said that I didn't want him here Anna. I want him in my life very much. Unfortunately, life just doesn't always work that way."

* * *

And there goes yet another chapter… thanks for reading :)

**Tiff3488** – Thank you. I hope that loathing doesn't go far enough to stop you reading.

**Pendragon4** – Those files are an interesting matter that will come back to haunt our little Jack in due time. Stick with me.

**A1kyndria** – There were lots of reasons for sending Riddick off and in the end he had a choice and made it. I think they need to be away from each other when they have a choice rather then just circumstances forcing them to be apart.

**K-Marie-M** – Ahh yes, Bella, the master of manipulation. Will anyone believe me when I say that her intentions aren't all bad?

**FemmePhantom** – Riddick is gone… well at least for now. Jack has a little moving forward to do before Riddick comes back into her life and he has a few loose ends to tie up too. The real question is who is going to save who?

**Saismaat** – Thank you very much, now Jack's got to deal with the damage her blind following of Riddick's ways has done to her other relationships.

**Nothingsnobody** – Oh asses shall be saved and files will be read I promise you that.

**Thugs-4-Less** – I think thanking you for help is a given. I'm glad you're still helping me with this one and hope you have a good day…


	17. Chapter 16

1Chapter 16: The Start

I woke with a start. I was shaking but not due to lack of heat. My sheets were twisted about my body and were clammy with sweat. My heart was racing, practically trying to beat it's way out of my chest and my breath was sharp. My fists were clenched tightly in preparation to fight whatever monsters that my memories had dredged up but there in the first light of morning there were no monsters. At least none that I could physically do battle with.

A physical battle would have been easier then the one in my mind.

The breeze made my light blocking curtains flutter slightly, allowing a little light in now and then as they shifted, the fabric rustling in a way which at first I had found disturbing. There were a few constants in New Mecca, heat, light, sand and that damned breeze. Here, if it rained it appeared as an omen of sorts, nearly a miracle but whatever rain that did manage to fall was always hot.

That breeze is always hot on New Mecca, the air more often than not so dry as to nearly always leave you with an unquenchable thirst whilst out of doors. The city itself is built amongst miles and miles of rolling sand dunes to the north, south and west with an expanse much like a fresh water ocean stretching out as far as the eye could see to the east.

Bella sent me here to Imam. She didn't even ask me if I wanted to go or how I felt about it, just ordered me to pack my bags. Imam had been expecting me and I had strict instructions not to set foot on a ship home until I started sleeping again. My arguments on sleep being overrated were pretty much ignored.

Sometimes in my life it feels like if it's not one thing then it's another. I've never gotten over the nightmares that put me back as a teenager on that eclipse planet and for a time they were joined by nightmares of Riddick's capture. Now that those had receded back to the nothingness they were replaced by nightmares of Slam, the other reality of the way it had been.

My first week home I coped, went though the regen surgeries and the muscle reconstruction with disdain but little complaint, after all, what employer wants her assassins running around with identifying marks. I took Anna to school and picked her up again afterward. Started patching the wounds in my relationship with Ioan, sometimes being more successful than others.

I read the letter that Bauer had given me to send. I put it through decoders and ciphers only to find it was a fond farewell to a friend of many years. It detailed how much the friendship had meant to him and how important it was to carry on trying to piece together the puzzles in their shared work. Whatever that work was went unsaid and although it intrigued me, I felt no real need to pry into a dead man's personal life.

There was a strain of normality coming back to my life, that coupled with a near solid routine and a strange numbness kept me sane and the nightmares at peace. I started training with Wasp again and it wasn't long before he recommended me to go back to my other job, a thing which seemed to please Bella greatly and, of course, me too.

My first couple of jobs went like clockwork, that edge I had always seemed so proud of working in my favour, then it just all fell apart. I nearly botched a job, an easy one too and almost didn't get away with my life after un-botching it. In those adrenaline filled moments, my numbness receded and I lost it.

I stopped sleeping almost altogether within two weeks of the nightmares starting. There were numerous drugs and methods out there that worked alongside hour long power naps every once and a while to keep you functioning and alert.

I sighed as I untangled myself from my sheets and swung my legs over the side of my tall four-poster bed. I slipped my feet into the leather soled slippers resting on the floor at the side of the bed and reached for the glass of water on the table. The liquid was cool and sweet as it slid down my throat helping me throw off the grogginess of sleep.

I shrugged a long, thin robe over the top of the sleeveless top and long bottoms I had warn to bed before padding across the floor and opening the curtains and stepping out onto the balcony. I leaned my arms against the ornately made black railing that curved luxuriously around the perimeter and watched the first of the early morning crowd start on their way. I used to love that time of morning when I lived with Imam, I found peace in it which had at first been missing with the lack of Riddick in my life.

Anna had been the first to notice the change in me. Silly little thing ratted me out to her mother before talking to me and boom, I ended up on Helion Prime.

The breeze lifted my hair from the back of my neck and I sighed in near contentment. The nightmares were fading; if they would only go then I could at least get some sleep. Sleep was a precious commodity that my job now seemed to totally rely on too. At least in the peace of Imam's household they were fading steady and I was getting a little rest.

I heard the door to my room open smoothly, the iron ring that served as a door handle, hitting lightly off the wood of the door as it moved. There was a swish of robes brushing along the floor as the soft padding of feet made their way from the doorway to the balcony. The curtain fabric rustled as it was pushed aside and I smiled knowingly.

"Good morning, child," Imam said as he came to stand next to me, pressing a hot cup of creamy coffee into my hands.

"Good morning," I responded, taking the hot beverage he offered me and smiled at him. He had grown older in the years since I had lived with him. Grey touched the hair at his temples and there were lines of age around his eyes and mouth but his eyes were still as kind as they had always been.

"How did you sleep?" He asked as I took a sip of my coffee, noting that he'd put enough cream in the coffee this time for it to be a shade lighter then the hue my skin had taken on in the constant sun of New Mecca.

"I slept." I shrugged.

"Nightmares?" He looked at me seriously and I frowned.

"Just one. The whole thing could be a lot worse, Imam. Please don't fuss or worry about it. I'm dealing with it alright." I said turning so I was looking directly at him.

"Would your employer or Mr. Riddick agree with you?" He asked and I felt the sting of that slightly underhanded blow.

"I said that I was dealing with it, which implies that it's an ongoing process. Bella did what she had to do by sending me here and just because Riddick seems to be able to chase the nightmares away doesn't mean that it's something that's actually beneficial to either of us." I said.

"Perhaps you should come to afternoon prayers with me, Jack. The peace you seek might be waiting for you there." The invitation was becoming part of our continual morning routine. It always played out in much the same way and I couldn't help but respect my adoptive father for his tenacity.

"Thank you for the invitation, Imam, but peace with God isn't on my list of things to do in the immediate future. Thanks anyway." I finished off my coffee and Imam took the cup.

"The offer is there none the less, Jack." He nodded his acceptance of my answer as I straightened and together we left the balcony.

"I appreciate that." I nodded as I stopped in the doorway of my bathroom. He carried on until he was at the door to my room then paused as if on second thought.

"Riddick was in contact last night while you were out." He closed the bedroom door he had left open incase Ziza happened to be moving around in that particular part of the house. "He's well and exploring a system of planets that have an interesting connection to his past." I nodded my understanding of his words but said nothing. It was the first time I had heard anything of Riddick since I had sent him off in the skiff. I looked down at the floor and then up again. "Yes, Jack, he asked after you, seemed a little concerned when I told him why you were here. I got the impression that he would drop what he is doing if I told him that things were serious."

"Well, they aren't." I said quickly and defensively. "If he gets in contact with you again please leave me out of the conversation. If he wants to know what's going on with me he can talk to me." I said firmly and Imam sighed. He opened his mouth to speak but never got he chance.

"Daddy!" Ziza practically shrieked as she knocked on my bedroom door.

"I'll see you at breakfast." I said turning into the bathroom and closing the door.

I knew that my stubbornness in my unwillingness to even talk about Riddick was exasperating to Imam, after all, he was one of the few people who actually would understand the connection that I felt with Riddick and I wouldn't even allow him into my thoughts. Perhaps it was slightly hurtful to on a level which I didn't mean for it to be but it was the way that I dealt with things.

The weather in New Mecca agreed with me but then it always had. The deathly pale that my skin had taken on in Slam turned into a nice golden tan. The regen had taken care of the scars on my back and leg leaving my skin looking as good as new and the muscle work they had done at the same time got rid of the limp and brought my shoulder back nearly to full use but it looked like I would need another of the same type of surgery in the near future.

I turned the shower on and wasted no time but quickly washed and changed, only towel drying my freshly cut hair before replacing the piercing that I had nearly had to get re-done. Imam had remarked on them making me look very much like a convict when I first wore them in his house. Lajjun just kept muttering 'no' to Ziza every time she looked at them.

"Will you pick me up from school today, Jack?" Ziza asked me the minute I had sat down at the long wood table that was placed in the middle of the kitchen.

"I've picked you up everyday from school since I got here haven't I?" I asked her, giving Lajjun a smile as she set a bowl of fruit in front of me and poured me a cup of coffee.

"You don't have to, Jack." Imam said to me as Lajjun refilled his coffee cup too.

"Daddy!" Ziza gave her father a disgusted look.

"It's not a problem, Imam. It's a nice walk." I waved off his comment and Ziza made a huffing noise as if to say, 'I told you so'. I reached across the table and ruffled the little girl's mass of black curls. Her mother stopped what she was doing long enough to give me a disapproving look and fix her daughter's hair.

"Imam, I need you to stop off at the market and pay off our account this morning." Lajjun said as she moved to the sink.

"Of course." He nodded, looking back over at me. "What plans do you have for the day?"

"I'm not really sure yet. I'll probably go back to the academy and do some more training." I replied with a shrug.

"Shall we have an ice bath waiting for you again?" Lajjun gave me that all too mothering look she held in reserve for times when she felt I needed it and I cringed.

"I just train hard." I tried to explain it away.

"You're working hard to kill yourself." She retorted.

Lajjun had that way about her, that motherliness that made her want to care for every stray that crossed her path. That included me too so it would seem. She knew that Imam had adopted me and that I'd runaway to live with a criminal that had saved both our lives when she had married him. She had even met Riddick and I on a number of occasions and been nothing but a wonderful and caring hostess.

I however had never really respected or cared much for her opinion until she had sent Imam to find me after Riddick was captured. She took me into her home and looked after me until I found a way to start rebuilding what I could only see then as a totally shattered life. Because Imam cared she cared without question, if anything she made me feel more apart of the family then even Imam did.

"I had, had a particularly bad dream that night." I said looking over at Ziza who was finishing off her breakfast. She didn't need to know any more then that about my nightmares.

"Like you did this morning?" Lajjun gave me a pointed look.

"About the monsters that, that man saved you and daddy from?" She said without blinking and I looked over at an aghast looking Lajjun.

"I didn't say a word to her I swear!" I quickly put both hands in the air as if to attest to my innocence. If there was one thing that she and I had always agreed on without needing to say it, it was that her seven, going on eight year old did not need to know about what happened on that planet.

"I know. Daddy's been telling me that story forever!" Ziza shook her head and exclaimed before anyone else had a chance to open their mouths. Lajjun looked like she'd happily kill her husband and I couldn't help but feel bad for him. He however seemed unworried as his daughter put her breakfast dishes to wash and skipped out of the kitchen.

"You wanna join me?" I asked her as she quickly schooled her expression. I certainly wouldn't like to be Imam later.

"Perhaps another time. Would you mind dropping Ziza off to school as well today?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll be ready to go in fifteen minutes." I said taking my coffee cup with me as I stood and left the room. If Imam was going to get a tongue lashing I did not want to be there.

I went upstairs and grabbed my gym bag and the other personal affects that I carried with me which included my weapons and the licence I had to keep to carry them. Not even in the more peaceful then not New Mecca could I relax enough not to have weapons present on my person.

I was in the process of dumping my things in the hall before going to find Ziza when there was a bang on the door and a shuffling of heavy duty boots on the stone doorstep. It was one of those things that normal people wouldn't pick up on but then I wasn't normal people. In a hot place like New Mecca most people wore sandals or light shoes not boots and that was enough to make me open the door with care. Call me paranoid, it's the truth.

I wasn't wrong about my paranoia either. A very cranky, travel-worn Ioan was standing looking as mad as hell in the doorway. He looked at me and I looked back at him, taking in his dishevelled appearance and trying to think of a way to explain him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.

"I'm tried. I'm angry. I'm hungry. I'm hot. I've just come out of cryo sleep and I don't want to have to be here. How 'bout you say hi and invite me in." Ioan snapped and I frowned at him.

"I'm on holiday. You're supposed to be working. You're not supposed to be here. I have the right to know what's going on before I let you into a peaceful man's home." I replied.

"Bella didn't send me directly. Technically the minute I walked out of Bella's estate I terminated my employment and yours. I really don't want to explain anything else to you until I'm somewhere that everyone isn't going to hear you start screaming." He growled at me and I gave him a totally bewildered look.

"Get in." I snapped at him. "You better have a damn good explanation for this or you're not leaving this house alive." I opened the door wide and stepped out of the way so he could enter, my heart pounding in my chest, my mouth dry and my good mood shattered. "Dump your stuff here and wait for me." I said before turning away from him and half walking, half jogging down to the kitchen.

"Who was it, Jack?" Lajjun asked me as I entered the room.

"I can't take Ziza to school." I said as Imam stood frowning. I must have looked shaken for him to react like that.

"What's wrong?" He took a step toward me and I backed away, holding both my hands up and shaking my head at him.

"Don't know yet. I need to use your office." I said suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. Why would Bella terminate Ioan and I in the same breath?

"Of course." Imam looked worried and I felt even worse. I never meant to worry him and I didn't like it. He had taken me in yet again and I was brining trouble into his house.

"Do you need anything?" Lajjun asked.

"Time and space." I replied before making my way outside again to where Ioan was standing with a bemused looking Ziza in front of him. "Your mom is looking for you, Ziza." I said shooing the girl away.

"What is it with you and kids?" Ioan shook his head.

"Maybe I was one once." I shrugged and motioned with my head for him to follow me up the stairs and through to Imam's study. "Now what is this about? Why are you here and how did I lose my job because of you?"

"It's about Anna." Ioan said the minute the door closed behind him.

"What about Anna?" I rounded on him.

"Preston was killed and her nanny, then Anna was grabbed. I've come to get you so you can help me get her back." I blanched as he spoke. I fucked up and couldn't keep myself together and now Anna was grabbed. I looked up at him, my hand tightly grabbing one of Imam's chairs.

"Is she alive?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "But if Bella were to send anyone after her they'd kill her."

"So you quit." He nodded again and I nodded slowly back. "Why?"

"Bella and her family have made a lot of enemies. This is just another power struggle." He shrugged but there was more to it and he had the look on his face that clearly told me he wasn't going to say anything else.

"Do you know who has her?"

"Pretty good idea." Ioan replied.

"Then we have a job to do."

* * *

Hey there everyone and there goes another chapter. Hope you enjoyed, hang in there with me, things are about to get bumpy. Feel free to drop a review…

**Tiff3488** – Yep, Bella is a bad guy and you can only trust her so far but is she the real bad guy? Not really but then, we haven't really met the real bad guys yet.

**Saismaat** – Thank you. I'm glad that my characters come off as adult in their reactions to situations. In many ways, Jack is still having to learn how to deal with her past emotions and learn how to see certain situations differently and rationalise them like the adult that she is but she's getting there.

**FemmePhantom** – I have plans, as in I had a beginning and I have an ending and I have connections for everyone in that but there are still parts of my grand plan that are still forming in many ways. I'm glad that the characters are coming across in such a strong way; it's going to be important to be able to identify with them in the coming chapters.

**Notafraidtolive** – I'm glad you're enjoying.

**Thug-4-Less** – You're right, it does seem somewhat fitting that Jack has to deal with a kid in much the same way that Riddick had to deal with her, call it a little bit of poetic justice. Thanks for helping getting this chapter rolling!

**K-Marie-M** – Bella is a person in a position of power and she has secrets and those secrets are going to get everyone in a whole lot of trouble that perhaps could have been avoided if she hadn't kept them.

**Pendragon4** – Thank you. Jack and Anna have something of a unique relationship that comes in a lot of ways from Jack seeing a lot of herself in Anna and wanting the kid to have better then she did.


	18. Chapter 17

Before you all get stuck in and (I hope) enjoy what i have written, here's a quick AN. After nearly a year (I know, embarrassing) I'm back and doing pretty good so far. I'm afraid there is no real explanation for my long absence except to say that life caught up with me. I had a tough year and with various situation changes writing on any level, my own original work or my fan fiction, became a near impossibility for me until recently when my life started to get itself back in order. I have every intention of completing this piece of fiction so if you stick with me just a little longer i hope not to disappoint (at least not too much). So with thanks as always to the ever patient and helpful Thug-4-Less here is the long awaited but hopefully worth while chapter 17. As always any reviews will be a great motivation and make opening my mailbox that much more delightful.

Kayla

* * *

Chapter 17: Along For The Ride 

"I don't know if you'll get this or even if you check this particular channel anymore but I guess I had to try. My shit's fucked up, funny that I'm calling you I guess. I couldn't keep it together and Anna's been grabbed. I'm going after her…Bella's hands are tied...I..." I hit the pause button and bit my lip. This was the third time I'd tried to record the same message to send to Riddick but again it wasn't going as I wanted it to. "Fuck!" I hissed as Ioan walked through the door with Imam and they both looked seriously at me.

"I wish you would not do this Jack." Imam said as he closed the door.

"If someone were to grab Ziza I would be the first person you'd call and you'd expect me to get her back, no matter what the cost. Anna is just as important to me; don't expected me to do anything different now." I snapped a little harshly before turning back to the message I was trying to record and discarding it.

"What can I do Jack?" Imam said after a few moments of silence.

"Contact Riddick. Tell him what's happening. I can't bring myself to ask for help, not that I want you to do it for me but I think he should know is all." I said looking over at Ioan who was clenching his jaw the way he did when ever Riddick was mentioned. The fact that he had been mentioned in the same sentence as the word 'help' would not be doing much to improve his temper. "Do you have everything we need?" He nodded. "Do you have a ship waiting?" Another nod. "Know where we're going?" He nodded once more and I stood.

"Ready?" Ioan asked me. It was my turn to nod as I stooped and gathered the bag Ioan had packed for me. It was heavy clunky, I turned a questioning glace his way. "I already grabbed everything else you'd need from your before I came." I nodded my understanding.

"Jack…" Imam's voice made me pause at the door Ioan was holding open for me.

"Yeah?" He looked sad as I turned back to him.

Imam crossed the room quickly and wrapped his arms around me, crushing me to his chest. I let my bag fall and then returned his hug, closing my eyes and letting myself relax into the feeling of being cared about. "Come back to us in one piece child." He whispered in my ear before realising me and letting me pick up my bag and walk out the door.

If I died I could say I was loved, that was more then most could say.

For most visitors, New Mecca was easy to move through, the well planed layout of the city and surrounding areas made it easy to find where you were going quickly. The people, though peaceful and friendly enough tend to leave guest alone, those whoever that were frequent visitors, ex-residents or even pilgrims sometimes found it hard to move from sector to sector of the largest city on Helion Prime without being stopped.

As an ex-resident and the daughter of a high profile religious and community leader, leaving became something of a trial for Ioan and I. I by my own connects to this place was far too conspicuous, especially since it seemed obvious to everyone that I was trying to leave in a hurry.

"Don't make eye contact!" I hissed at Ioan as I grabbed his arm and dragged him past three older men that were making a beeline for us. After only having made it into the market sector, two sectors away from Imam's home and another four from the space port where the ship Ioan had chartered did my best attempts at a peaceful leaving get totally squashed.

"Jacquelyn al-Walid!" A hand was placed on each of my shoulders and I was pulled into a rough embrace by a man who was one of Imam's associates.

"Aamir Rashid." I grimaced as I was released and he stopped back from me, his deep brown eyes taking in my travel clothes, packed bag in hand and an angry looking companion. His smiled wavered and was soon replaced totally by a frown. Part of me was surprised he hadn't opened my mouth to check my teeth or asked if I'd found a husband yet.

"Leaving? Khurram will be disappointed; he had been waiting to see you again." Aamir stated, looking at Ioan beside me once more and then down at my left hand, his chest seeming to puff out even more than before. "An Escort? Surely Abu al-Walid would not allow his eldest child to leave escorted by a man not her husband." Clearly I shouldn't have held my breath for civility.

"This is a colleague of mine. I've got to get back to work. It would appear that they can't cope without me." I answered ignoring the dig at my unmarried status. "Give my regards to Khurram and your wife."

"Indeed." There was more than a little bite and indignation behind that one word. "Safe journey." And without so much as another glace my way he hurried off into the crowd.

"Thanks." I hissed, sighing and moving away as quickly as I could before someone else popped up in his place.

"Who was that?" It didn't take Ioan long to jump straight to a topic of conversation that made me grimace.

"A work colleague of Imam's." I replied as I led him down a side street short cut that I took when I was in a rush to get to the gym and didn't want interrupted.

"Why was he so disappointed that you were leaving?" Ioan prodded; clearly my answer had not been satisfying enough for him.

"He's been trying to arrange my marriage to his eldest son Khurram for quite a few years now. My adoption into Imam's family gives me a lot of status here. It would be a good match in the community's eyes. I'm not so much for it, even if Khurram would go happily along with his father's plan." I pushed my way through the crowds that we emerged into, running my hand through my hair, that had started to plaster itself against my forehead and the back of my neck. Sometimes I hated the heat in New Mecca.

"Well, aint that quiet the thing. Never thought of you as the marrying type." He laughed and I scowled at him.

"I'm not." I replied dryly.

"Not..."

"Drop it!"

"Okay, chill!" Ioan, (still laughing like he'd heard the funniest thing in the world) held up his hand to signal his understanding that the topic, although still funny as hell, was now closed for discussion.

"Who are we chartered with?" I started pulling myself away from the world I was leaving and getting my mind back on business. As short as my holiday ended up being, it was still hard pulling myself back into the mindset of a hunter.

"Some friend of Wasp. Wasp arranged it all – it's pretty much untraceable." Ioan shrugged, his case of the giggles seeming to have left him for the moment.

"So she is helping us then?" The fact that Wasp had arranged the charter made me feel a little better. Wasp, I trusted almost as much as I did Riddick.

"If you mean the enormously generous severance cheque she gave me along with a trunk full of gear Wasp would be proud to use that just seemed to be in my Katana when I got home..." He shrugged.

"I wish we had Wasp in on this one or another set of competent hands at least." I chewed on my lip.

"I have friends. You have contacts."

"None I would trust with Anna's life except for Riddick and I don't even know where he is and I'm not sure how to contact him." It was just up to the two of us, for better or worse we were just going to have to make it work. Iona's face had darkened as I spoke. How long was Riddick going to stand as a bone of contention between us?

"It'll work the way it's supposed to. We'll get her back."

"She never should have been allowed to be taken." I snarled. "If I had been there, it wouldn't have happened."

"But you weren't and she's gone. Wishing it different isn't going to make it any different and it's not going to make our lives easier." He guided me through the space docks to where he had left the small star jumper he had chartered through Wasp.

The Captain, a dark skinned individual with a scar that ran diagonally across his face from his hairline all the way down his neck, disappearing underneath the color of his t-shirt was standing at the bottom of the lowered ramp waiting for us. I recognised him instantly. I had been a passenger on his ship when I was eighteen years old and trying to get as far away from the sight of Riddick's capture as was humanly possible.

"Miss al-Walid." The Captain nodded his head as we approached. "Didn't ever figure on seeing you again."

"Some goes Captain Reich and it's Richman now." I took the hand that was offered to me and shook it firmly. This Captain had a good memory.

"I'll get Diana to prep the ship and we'll be out of here in an hour." He waved us up the ramp.

"Thank you." Ioan said before starting up the ramp and showing me through to the quarters that he had clearly been using before he had come to get me. "Make yourself comfortable, don't worry, no cryo this time round. Everything I've been able to get on Anna's whereabouts is in the folder in my bag." He put the duffle on the double bed that was crammed into the tiny cabin. "I'll be back in twenty minutes."

Ioan wasn't talking to me. I don't know if that was the root of my uncomfortableness but it certainly didn't help it much either. The little ship that he had chosen for our journey home didn't offer cryo-sleep or creature comforts. The room we were given to share held only high storage cupboards and a very small double bed with just enough room to walk around it.

After I had made a decent job of checking out the ship, I barely left our small box room unless I needed to eat or take care of other necessities. Ioan on the other hand only seemed to come in to sleep but the night before he hadn't even chosen to do that. I'd seen him stalking the small brown eyed pilot who walked with an extra swing to her hips in his presence, it was easy enough to assume where it was he had slept.

I was glad that we were only a day away from home. All I could think of was little Anna alone and afraid at the mercy of a bunch of paid thugs. I closed my eyes for a moment then blinked rapidly to rid myself of the image of a battered and broken Anna while I reminded myself that there were rules in situations like this and that if Anna's kidnappers wanted anything from her parents they would play by those rule, the danger only really came if they didn't want anything.

What Ioan and I were planning was risky, Bella hadn't out rightly sent us but she'd have known what Ioan was going to do when she terminated him and never made any attempts to contact either of us to put a stop to the plans she had to know we'd make.

The whole thing made me feel sick, I just hoped that Anna knew I'd come for her! I didn't honestly believe she would think anything different.

There was almost too much going on through my head to really notice Ioan's arrival in the room till he touched my arm. I flinched, lashing out with the shiv I had close to hand, making him jump out of my reach and turn cold eyes on me as I looked up at him. I retracted my shiv, placing it back at my side and shrugged.

"Nervous some Jack?" Sarcasm dripped from his words.

"Disappear much?" I answered back. I wasn't really mad at him, more at myself. Since he'd come to New Mecca to get me I'd been distant from him and I knew it. Part of it was fear and part of it was the fact that I was mad at myself. None of this would have happened if I could keep my head on my shoulders for more then an hour at a time.

"It's not exactly like you're good company at the moment Jack; in fact you're pretty bad company." He frowned at me but his tone was patient and calm the way it had been from the start. He was babying me and it pissed me off.

"Because I'm not jumping your bones and making this trip a little exciting for you? There are more important things going on here then our little arrangement." I shook my head. I wanted to get into a fight and even though I knew it wouldn't do me or Anna or anyone else any good, I couldn't seem to quash the desire to hurt someone besides myself.

"Pull it together!" He said coldly not entering into the argument like I wanted him to.

"I'll pull it together when you get your head out of your ass and actually start helping me work out how to get Anna out safely as well as ourselves. You haven't given me much to work on here except for the name of a club." I was exasperated.

"So now you want _my_ help." He folded his arms across his chest, his voice raising to match the pitch and tone of my own.

"You came and got me so I could help you, not so I was going to have to handle this on my own. This is Anna's life we're talking about here, we're trying to save her not kill her. It's a different situation then taking out a mark. Of course I want your help!" I threw my hands in the air. "I thought the fact that you and I are here together made that obvious."

"Which is why you keep wishing for extra sets of hands and tried to get in touch with Riddick." Ioan wasn't listening to me but at least we had finally gotten to the root of the problem.

"Jealous much?" I rolled my eyes. "You're being a prick because I had Imam call Riddick and tell him what was going on here?"

"I didn't say that." He avoided my eye contact and I felt like I was talking to a child again. This was a topic that I thought we had covered the week we had gotten back from Butcher Bay. I thought that he had come to understand what a habit it was for me to follow Riddick's orders and take advantage of his expertise when the situation arose for them to be needed.

"Then why Ioan? If Riddick isn't a factor then I don't understand what your problem is." I threw my hands in the air, wishing that he would just knock it off so we could get on with the job at hand.

"Well hell, maybe it is Jack, maybe I'm sick of you fucking up because of him. If he was still in Slam then Anna would still be safe at home with her family, I would be doing my real job instead of running around the galaxy with a girl that can't hold herself together trying to find a kidnapped child that we might be doing more harm than good for. And I'm sure that hundreds of people would sleep a whole lot easier with your 'mentor' behind bars. You used to be good Jack." There was a venom there that I hadn't been expecting and it hurt. "Now you're weak. Pathetic. Can't even handle your own business without calling on big bad Riddick."

"That's not true." I snarled and shook my head, feeling like I had just been slapped.

"Then prove it Jack." He turned and left, the door sliding shut behind him. I grabbed the shiv I had almost sliced him with and launched it at the door with a growl. The thunk it made as it stuck into the metal wasn't as satisfying as I thought it was going to be and I had the sudden urge to start throwing anything and everything at hand only to find that nothing really came to hand.

"Asshole!" I hissed as I threw myself back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling, my fist clenching and unclenching as I grappled with the information that I had and tried to work out a bullet proof plan around it. One thing I was sure of, this was something I had to do on my own, I was not taking Ioan along for the ride.


	19. Chapter 18

So I kinda disappeared off the face of the planet and for that I'm very sorry, this has been one hell of a year for me and i'm only just not beginning to get my feet back under me which means that I'm finally listening to the rather annoying voice of Jack in the back of my head who keeps screaming at me that Anna is still kidnapped. Thank you to everyone who is still sticking with me and this story after so long a wait for any updates. I shall do my best to start updating more frequently (I'm aiming for a chapter every other week atm).

So please read, hope you enjoy.

Kayla.

Chapter 18: That Sinking Feeling

Ususally there is a sense of relief that follows touching down at Zepher Station. Normally Zepher Station means that I'm three hours away from home, good food, a comfortable bed and good company. It meant a top of the line security system, an armament that had taken Riddick and I years to build up and familiarity with my surroundings.

This time however there was an oppressive sense of hyperawareness hanging over my head as we exited the ship we had traveled on. Ioan and I had solved most of our differences and the rest of them had been buried under the circumstances we had found ourselves in. Now there was just worry and he seemed to have turned into a protective shadow that I couldn't shake. It was all set to make me feel more and more uncomfortable as we left planetary customs and security.

We ended up steering clear of my home and Ioan's. It made sense that if anyone were to come looking for us that that would be the first place they would check and I wasn't wrong either I later found out.

We set up a base of operations in a seedy motel on the wrong side of town. But at least I could say I was on home turf. I knew the city like I knew myself. A fact that gave me a little more confidence. I would get Anna home safe and sound!

The first thing Ioan did when we checked in was sleep. The firs thing I did was do a thorough inventory. Before he came for me he hadn't done a bad job of pulling together the equipment that he figured I needed. Two sniper rifles including one I had modified the scoop on and added heat seeking attachments to. I had kept a Wang on me, my Popper and shivs too while I had been away but he had taken an extra of just about all three as well as a two semi-automatic machine pistols and a standard glock. There were a couple of smoke grenades that would be easy enough to put on a timer, and some timed mines that although small in size still packed quiet the punch.

It was going to be one hell of a job.

Once the inventory was complete and with Ioan snoring softly in the bed, I set up my hacking equipment that was going to be the key to my success or failer. It seemed that we knew Anna's position and it became quiet clear why Bella's hands were tied. They were keeping Anna in plain sight. Anything Bella did herself would tie her very much to whatever it was going on.

So I set about inputting code, creating a trail that would take one hell of a hacker to tag to me and even that would take months, maybe even longer. I was a good assassin. I was a brilliant Hacker. With my code firmly set in place I started pulling up the main building plans for the club that we knew had been Anna's last known location. Then thermal images which showed a few extra building modifications. Then it was on to the buildings in a three block radius and finally the employee and owner records past and present.

"Fucking hell!" I breathed.

James Bauer and his brother were on the employee roster and they had shares in the club or at least they had had. The co-owner on closer inspection was their half brother, same mother different father which equaled different last name. Trust Ioan to start getting sloppy. There was something about the name that kept triggering something at the back of my mind.

Then it clicked. The name matched the name on the letter that James Bauer had given to me and I'd sent. I mentally kicked myself. Maybe I was getting sloppy too; I should have done a background check on the recipient.

"_There are things going on around you that you can't begin to imagine. There are facts about you that Bella is trying to hide and she's using you to do it."_ The Warden's words came back to me as I looked at the information on my screen.

What was going on that I didn't know about? I couldn't help but wish at that moment that I had made a different decision back in Butcher Bay, that I had read the files that Rachael had given me before giving them to Riddick to take with him wherever the fuck he was.

"Well aint that just a kick in the pants." I said out loud, mentally berating myself.

"What is?" It appeared that Ioan had finally woken.

"Bauer had another brother." I replied. "His wife owns the club."

"How did we miss a brother?" Ioan got out of bed and walked over to the table that I was sat at, surrounded by my equipment.

"Over ten years younger, with a different father and last name. If you did the research and there is only the club and their birth certificates and there was no other reason to check out the dead mother because her last name was still Bauer then I dunno?"

"Touch of sarcasm there Jack?" Ioan frowned. "So what, you think this is about revenge?"

"Maybe, partially but I think this is about whatever it was that got his brothers killed. So I need you to come clean with me now Ioan. I know the Bauer in Slam killed Bella's aunt, what did James Bauer do?" I asked as he looked over my shoulder at the screen where all the information I had pulled up on Jensen Hamilton and his wife Alicia was on display.

Interesting character though they were, they were not interesting enough for Ioan to be taking his sweet time over them like he was. I was beginning to grow more and more impatient with him and as if he sensed that he started talking.

"James was instrumental in arranging the death of another one of Bella's relatives. Bella's father ordered the assassination of his half sister and her whole family, an assassination that James' brother carried out. Not everyone died however." He shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. "When he died and Bella took over she had him thrown in Butcher Bay and in retaliation James helped kill the rest of Bella's aunt's family. It's taken her years to connect him with the events that took place but she managed and I got to kill James. There was no need to do any more digging, we got the two men we wanted." I got the feeling that there was more that I wasn't being told and it irritated me further. It wasn't often that Ioan got cagey with the fact but he was at that moment, he wouldn't meet my eye, a little bit of red had touched his checks and temples and he kept running his hand through his short cropped hair.

"What else?" I asked him.

"Nothing." He shook his head, his eyes looking away from me – back to the screen where the photographs of Jensen and Alicia were.

"So help me god, Ioan, if I find out there was more I should have know about later I will kill you, do you understand me?" He just shrugged in reply. "Fine. I need you to get us transport and take me to the club as soon as it hits 5am. I'm going to need to check out the lay of the land before I go in there for the first time. I need ways out."

"We." He corrected me and I shrugged this time.

"I need to get some supplies from the market and Colin and then we need to find a way to get me in there without being noticed to set up the diversion I'm going to need later to get Anna out." I pressed on.

"We." Ioan said a little more forcefully this time.

"No." I shook my head.

"I'm not taking a backseat in this Jack, you need me in on this, you're well known as Anna's bodyguard, they'll kill you on sight." Ioan's tone was even, although his expression was just as determined as mine.

"No, you're wrong. They'll want to talk to me first, maybe parade me around in front of Bella a bit like they are doing with Anna."

"They'll want to talk to you maybe. Maybe they'll beat the shit out of you, rape you then kill you." Ioan was getting snappy.

"Maybe." I shrugged. "They won't even give you the chance to talk, they'll shoot you on sight if they even suspect who you are. You killed both of that man's brother's if I was him then I'd pump you full of lead before even bothering to confront you. At least my way I get to do some talking and hopefully they won't even recognize me by the time I'm done with myself."

"What do you plan to do Jack?"

"They won't even recognize me by the time I'm done. Now go get the transport. We can talk more lately, there's plenty of time." I cut the conversation short.

"Fine but this discussion is not over yet. I'll go get the transport. You get some rest." This time I didn't argue with him as he got up and walked out of our room.

"_What the hell are you doing here Jack?" I cringed as I heard Riddick's voice. Clearly I had made more noise than I thought when I had tripped on my way out of my hiding place. This was it. I hadn't been away from New Mecca for more than twenty-four hours and I was already going to be looking forward to going back._

"_Hi." I offered lamely, my heart beating faster in my chest as I recognized the look that Riddick got on his face when he was really pissed and he was more than pissed now._

"_What the fuck are you doing here Jack?" Riddick slammed his fist down into the table top he was standing next to. I flinched, looking down at my feet for a moment almost feeling ashamed of myself before sticking out my chin and giving him my most determined look._

"_I'm not letting you leave me behind!" I declared, trying to sound adult and confident and sure I was failing in both cases._

"_I left you with the holy man for a reason." He was still bellowing at me._

"_And I left the 'holy man' for a reason too." I said right back. "I won't survive there Riddick. Take me with you." I almost killed myself for the begging tone that crept in at the end._

_Riddick just laughed at me._

_I raised my weapon as a reaction. _

_It was instinct. _

_He had taught me that instinct but I don't think I realized that at that moment in time. I don't think I even had a coherent thought process. I just knew I was in Slam. In the dark. And that Riddick had proved himself to be dangerous toward me. So I pointed my Wang at him. But I was trembling, my instinct had failed to recognize the fact that my body was shot to hell and I was running on adrenaline because I was already feeling woozy before I he even opened his mouth._

"_What you gonna do Jack? Pull the trigger?" He looked at me scornfully and I felt shock settle into my bones. "I dare you. Pull the trigger."_

"_Do you even know who you really are? Has she told you the real reason that she is willing to help you, why she employed you the minute her husband mentioned you to her?" Rachael was saying as she looked out of her window at the rioting slam below. I knew at that moment that something had changed but I wasn't sure what. I didn't care about what she was saying, I don't really think I absorbed it. Those sirens meant that Riddick was soon to be free again._

_I had known that watching Riddick walk out of my life was tough. I remembered well how it felt to be eighteen years old and watch him being driven away in the middle of an armored motorcade. Over the short years since the crash, Riddick had become my family, the only family I had ever really known to care about me. I didn't know what was left for me, I didn't know where to turn and I didn't know if I would be welcomed by anyone I had met or left behind as some of the cases were._

_My first real separation from Riddick had come to me as a sudden shock, like a death. There was a lot of pain then, grief; I guess some would call it and I didn't understand any of it. It wasn't acceptable to my way of thinking and yet that was all there was too it, it was a fact and that was that. It was the guilt that almost destroyed me at first. I learned to live with it, it became easier and then I helped him escape from Slam._

_The world I lived in was so changed from the world that I had known with him. The freedom I had experienced without him was immeasurable in comparison to what he had allowed me. I had broken many of his cardinal rules. I was traceable through a good tax paying job. I didn't move every six months. I had a home. I had friends. I had a job that put my life in danger and a second job that could land me in Slam if I were ever caught._

_None of that prepared me for him walking away by choice. Not that the choices I had given him were great but it still hurt. The pain was back. I wanted to change it all as he piloted that skiff away. I wanted to make him come back, part of me wanted to leave with him, part of me wanted to force him into my life somehow but in the end he walked away. He left me._

It was the strong urge to cry that finally pulled me out of sleep some three hours later and instead of allowing the anguish that my dreams had left me with dissolve me I took to pacing the hotel room. My mind running over and over again the plans that I had made and was about to start to put into motion before all thoughts of Riddick had been chased from my head.

Riddick was gone. I had to accept that and move on or I was going to fail. I would accept it! I turned toward the door, starting to pace the line toward it when the door handle shook. I moved quickly, picking up the Wang that I had purposefully left on the only table within the room and leveled it at the door. Ioan walked in, gave me and my weapon a very skeptical look before closeing the door firmly behind me. "You're late." I snapped.

"Got some more info for you." He shrugged and set the bag he had been carrying down on the table I had put my weapon back on. "Thought you'd at least sleep a little longer."

"Couldn't." I shrugged.

"More nightmares?" He looked concerned.

"Wouldn't call them that."

"Then what?" He sat down in one of the chairs and looked at me.

"Just a dream." I shook my head at me. "What did you find out?"

"I can get us in there in two days. There's an open house event, free entry, open bar – lots of people in and out of there." Ioan said.

"Which means that's when they plan on moving her." I frowned. "I need to get in there today."

"Place is locked down right now. No one seems to be there though. Should be easy enough to do." Ioan shook his head. "Why now, thought you wanted to wait till there were lots of people around for the distraction."

"I need to plant my distractions." I replied. "You didn't happen to notice what security system they're using?" I sat down and powered up my computers.

"I thought you already knew that from the plans." He opened the bag he had put down and started pulling out what looked like foil wrapped circles but the smell from them made it quite clear that he had brought breakfast back with him, possibly from the amount lunch too.

"That building is over a hundred years old. I update my security systems once sometimes twice a year. I know I would never trust something that was a hundred years old." I rolled my eyes at him as I peeled back the foil on one the sandwich he handed me to reveal thick slices of meat covered in melted cheese.

"Looked to me like the heaviest security there besides solid doors and a couple of hired thugs was a standard Excalibur 1000 security system. That's what, a decade old and I know they still sell it. It's a solid enough system for an area like this and no everyone is as security wacko as you are Jack." He shrugged, waving me off.

"How did you ever make assassin grade let alone one of the top assassins on this half of the planet?" I shook my head at him in exasperation. "Do you ever go in somewhere you haven't planted someone or do you always make sure they aren't inside a building they are familiar with?"

"Very funny, eat your breakfast." Ioan rolled his eyes.

"Lets be serious now." I said, biting my lip. "There are three different security systems within the Excalibur 1000 range, they are denoted by –"

"Color." He finished for me. "Each color signals a different grade blue being the most standard set up. Followed by Red and lastly the silver system and from what I could tell by making an expensive toilet run, we're dealing with a middle grade system but who knows if they have upgraded the system themselves. I know I've seen you mess with your own system so many times it's not even funny." I managed another shake of the head as she finished speaking, a look on his face like he dared me to tell him he was wrong.

"A toilet stop?"

"Thought I could check the place out."

"And now they know we're coming." I had that sinking feeling back in the pit of my stomach and I did not like it.


End file.
